Thread: Scissor jacks to the extreme

To be honest I haven't actually looked yet in shops etc, but thought I'd ask here.

Does anyone know where one would purchase (Yes buy, bot just cruise to PaP :p ) an aftermarket scissor jack, more specifically one that at LEAST go as low as your general Civic/Integra one, and hopefully go higher and be a bit more 'sturdy'.

You might ask "Why not just buy a trolley jack?" Well, I've found it fairly annoying when working in the garage without having a $600 jack just casually hanging round to lift the entire car up to say, bleed the brakes, or change the wheels quickly especially when you jack the back up for the tow hook (This time with a friends trolley jack) and it cant go high enough to get axle stands under there, then you have to get blocks out (Real safe) and jack it up more, then once you've got the back done, you go to the front rad support and its about 3cm off the ground as the car's now leaning forward.

So you might be able to tell me wrong here but I'll explain my madness just once. Buy 4 beefy scissor jacks that can hold a decent weight, weld some larger plate on the bottom to make them more sturdy, perhaps add some rubber grips too. Then on the spinning part of the scissor jack where you'd usually put a stupid screw river or scissor jack tool thing in, you weld half a 17mm bolt (I have done this on the standard one in my car and it works flawlessly) to the end. Then the world opens up and you can now use a ratchet spanner, socket set, air tools or electric drill to winde that puppy up. So once you have those and a set of right tools you could have you car up in the air in minutes without blocks of wood and hopefully for a really reasonable price (Not to mention lighter than a massive steel hydrolic trolley jack!)

Am I being silly? Or is this potentially a reasonable idea?

oh Geoff....

Anything is do-able. Have you thought of Air-jacks ?


What would be cool(er) is to mount the scissor jacks into the car so they are hidden when retracted, but pop a rubber bung out of the sill, slide in your socket on the end of your impact drill (sounds kinda rudey now!) and away you go! Fatal problem with this whole idea is the fact that only one jack can be raised at a time, so you would have to run around and do a bit on each corner at a time.... boring!

Have seen an even better idea where you have sill stand holes in the sills (durr!) and a frame that slots in to each side using old school Ford (iirc) wind-up jacks - so you can raise the whole car or just the front or just the back. Super stable and no need for axle stands.

Even better would be a single jack of some sort at the front and rear of the car. so you can raise the front lets say. it's balanced like a tripod (or me without pants for instance) - then if you want to get the whole car up, put axle stands under the front, and raise the jack at the rear of the car and bingo the dog! You only need 2 axle stands, not 4. Jacks are still contained in the vehicle structure and you can quickly raise and lower the car by yourself.

Or buy air-jacks

Old Ford or VW pump jacks work super sweet. I has a box of scissor jacks in the garage. Dunno how high they go though, but they are super slammed uleh.

Have thought of a method where two jacks can raise it at once (Pretty simple really) so that you;re not lifting a corner at a time and potentially putting the car off balance.

So the threaded pipe on the scissor jack always stays at a constant length and just moves at perfect horizontal motion upwards when the jack is wound up, thus means that if the 2 jacks were connected via a pipe, then both jacks would raise at once, and you would only have to winde 1 jack at a time. Obviously the flaw with this is that the pipe has to be strong enough and the drill etc has to have enough torque to be able to now lift up double what it was doing with only 1 jack.

Time to test this retarded idea I reckon

I don't have the skills at all... but I know a certain person who does

Thanks though, might be actually build-able your way too.

But in saying that, might as well get a trolley jack, they look about as heavy! but might be worth it in a workshop kinda of situation

Originally Posted by SiRge

Buy 4 beefy scissor jacks that can hold a decent weight, weld some larger plate on the bottom to make them more sturdy, perhaps add some rubber grips too. Then on the spinning part of the scissor jack where you'd usually put a stupid screw river or scissor jack tool thing in, you weld half a 17mm bolt (I have done this on the standard one in my car and it works flawlessly) to the end. Then the world opens up and you can now use a ratchet spanner, socket set, air tools or electric drill to winde that puppy up. So once you have those and a set of right tools you could have you car up in the air in minutes without blocks of wood and hopefully for a really reasonable price (Not to mention lighter than a massive steel hydrolic trolley jack!)

Am I being silly? Or is this potentially a reasonable idea?

I would not jack a car up off the ground on 4x scissor jacks.

Scissor jacks only have the ability to push up one corner of a car that is restrained in position by having 2 or more wheels still on the ground, and braked or chocked.

Even if you added a decent base plate the scissor jacks have minimal stability, because the two bottom pivots are so close together, and with the addition of any lateral force (e.g. your mate leaning against the side of the car, or the ground having a slight slope) the car can sway sideways, that bends the bottom joint of your scissor jacks out of shape, and then the whole thing falls down.

(I know this because I attempted a couple of silly things in my yoof.)

Basically, imagine a big steel lattice high voltage power pylon, with all the little diagonal bars removed, and just the 4x big corner uprights remaining. Yes you still have 4x loadbearing members that can take the weight, but they depend on having something to keep them straight, and without the cross-bracing there's nothing to keep them pointed straight. A car on 4x scissor jacks is structurally similar.



The air tool thing to quickly wind scissor jacks up & down sounds like a really good idea IMO. Make sure you have really good lubrication on the main long threaded tension rod through the middle of the jack though!

Originally Posted by M3_Power

EZ CAR LIFT - FREE-STANDING USE-ANYWHERE CAR LIFT! FAST. SAFE. STRONG.EASY.

I do like those! need to find some "plans" and make one!

I'm sure you and Bam could think something up

legit idea to me. what about wind up hydraulic bottle jacks - like something off a landcruiser/prado and modifying the part you wind with a 17mm nut?

wind up then wind down - or even bottle jacks that self retract when you relieve the pressure

the thing is weight though.