Cut down my Hi-Lift a bit

As you all know by now I'm really pleased with that Hi-Lift farm jack. Works great whenever I need to lift my truck. Really impressed. But I guess you need to have an older truck, like mine, to have real use for it. It doesn't work well with modern cars with plastic bumpers and such.

Anyways, I've had it for a while now and I have come to the conclusion that I think it would suit me even better if I trimmed it down a bit.
I searched the forums to hear about any experiences with cutting down a Hi-Lift. Some people seemed to think it was a bit tricky and even risky to do that.
So, let's do this!

Before the surgery. Standing 60" tall.

Taking it apart.

I started by tapping the locking pin out and taking the foot off. I thought it would be clever to chop a piece off of the low end rather than the top. That way my crooked cutting would be hidden by the foot.

Point of no return!

I wanted my Hi-Lift to match the height of the rear door, where I keep it attached. That meant taking approx 14,5" off.

That's 4,5 lbs of steel right there.

I thought the cutting would be way harder but it came off just fine using a pretty standard 2mm steel cutting blade. Just take it easy and don't rush it if you're going to have a go at it yourself.

I tried to cut it so that the locking pin would correspond to the hole in the beam - I failed!
So I had to drill a new hole in the foot. Rather that than cutting it again, and again...
I replaced the locking pin with an allen bolt. There's no real need to change that but I did anyway.
I also sprayed some red rust protector on the end where it was cut.

And there it goes!