AC50-Jb-3 Lock-in Job Bucket, for Use with Obel00 & 6200 Series Step Ladders, Plastic, Blue

The instructions are detailed and didn't leave anything to the imagination. The instructions have different sections for the different ladders and require a careful study before and during the installation. At least the instructions are only in English, having multilingual instructions would make it way too confusing. Installation took about 3 hours to accomplish for my D6020-2 20' fiberglass ladder and its a little scary permanently modifying such a nice ladder knowing that if you mess up the ladder can be permanently damaged or made useless. Take your time. Here is my list of things to be aware of going into this installation. 1) Be very careful aligning the drilling templates!!! 2) Center punch the hole positions good then your drill bit shouldn't wander. I didn't need to do this but you might pre-drill the holes with a smaller bit if necessary. You have 6 holes to drill over about 14" x 3" area so the drilling must be done very precisely if the side rail is to align correctly. The rail bracket doesn't have any give in it for error. 3) Double or triple check your measurements/instructions and drill bit sizes. Be very careful sawing off the square aluminum bar that runs through the rung as it has to be within 1/8" accuracy. 4) Don't remove the black electrical tape that comes on the side rails, this is done near the end of the installation. 5) Hack-sawing the side rail is the easy part. Previous review recommends a cutoff wheel which I'm sure works well but isn't necessary. Before doing this I'd mount the side rails to check your drilling accuracy. This is the point of no return before cutting off the existing ladder feet. If you messed up the drilling which I'm sure you won't if you are careful you can always abort the project here if necessary. The holes shouldn't hurt the ladder but cut off the feet and their side rails supports and, game over. 6) Drilling out the heavy rivets from the bottom rung is a royal pain and maybe a cutoff wheel would remove the head faster. I don't do that everyday so I'm sure there are better methods. 7) Have a good clutched drill and a 7/16" socket and it will speed up putting the 14 nuts on the side rails and the two feet. 8) Make sure you have good sharp drill bits, the sizes are indicated in a previous review and note they are less common drill bit sizes. 9) Wear a mask for the fiberglass drilling. Good product, the ladder is definitely better and even stronger when the project is finished! Update August 2004 Having used this product for some time now I love it. I can level the ladder on almost any uneven surface. Even the bottom of my pool. Just pick the ladder up about 2-3" and drop it. Repeat that a few times until the ladder's levelers ratchet enough to level the ladder. The ladder locks in place when weight is put on it. It works great, well worth the 3 hours of work to put the levelers on. Makes the ladder so much easier to use.

These work by a square shaft that runs through the bottom rung into pinions riding along a rack inside each foot housing. When one leg is pushed on, the other leg extends, then when it's loaded (just the ladder weight is plenty) they lock! If it's uneven, pick it up level and put it back down. Pretty slick. I feel much safer now than before with my blocks of wood! I looked at the other types of levelers, but you need to bend over each time to set them, for my back these are worth the extra bucks and time to install. (Regarding bucks, these seem very high quality, everything is Al, Chromate or galvanized. The only plastic is a cap atop each leg, though these aren't critical for operation. Regarding install, took me 3 hrs). I put them on a 24' Davidson Aluminum ladder. Templates are available for all Werner ladders, but not for other brands, so I had to play around a little before drilling. (Make sure you leave enough room to get the nuts on from the inside! I put it all the way against the back so that the upper section of my ladder wouldn't contact the nuts/brackets when lowered, but almost couldn't get my wrench under the ladder sides to tighten them!) Like another reviewer, I couldn't see any reason to cut off the bottom rung, I'm curious why they want you to do that. The installation instructions are available above (.pdf file), I'd recommend reading first if you are like me and want to put them on a non-Werner ladder.

This product is quite ingenious and works very well. The only problem I've found is that the height adjustment is generally limited to one stair height. Installation is not for the meek. It involves disassembly of you current ladder base, hacksawing the side members, drilling new bolt holes using carefully chosen templates, and installing the auto ladder leveler hardware. However, the directions were excellent and if carefully followed, the installation should be successful.

My only complaint is that Werner doesn’t take into account in the instructions that a lot of customers may have a different brand of ladder