Engine crane won't lift

[Mr Pops]

If you know the correct way to bleed a hydraulic ram on an engine crane, you can probably skip the rest of my story about how I tried.. and just let me know how?So I'm borrowing my little brother's engine crane and pulled the engine and tranny out together. I could barely get it to lift high enough to clear the front crossmember, fortunately the front clip was off, so I still got it all out ok.

I lowered everything to the floor, separated the tranny and proceeded to try to lift the engine back up to put it on a stand, but it wont lift it more than about 3" off the ground.

This is a fairly new crane, but it's a "Power fist" brand, so maybe it's a POS. My buddy told me to top up the fluid, so I used brake fluid and filled it with the ram in the raised position. Still didn't work.

I then called a different friend who seems to know everything about everything and told me not to fill it with the ram in the raised position as you would overfill the ram. He said to fill it with the ram retracted and to position the ram so the fill hole was the highest point of the ram.

The hole is about 3/4 the way up the side of the ram, so I laid the crane on it's back and filled it up. I also tried bleeding it by loosening the control screw enough to let fluid out and tightening and loosening the control screw back and forth which kept letting more bubbles out of the fill hole, so I assumed there was just a bunch of air in there. Still won't lift.

I'm assuming brake fluid should work fine instead of hydraulic fluid? Or is it too thin for the seals maybe? It looks a little wet on the base of the little plunger under the handle, maybe loosing pressure here? The only other thing I can think of is that I transported this thing laying down in my truck, maybe it didn't like that?

Thanks for any help guys