QuickJack portable lift for track - status just posted on Garage Journal

I like others are curious about this new lift but everyone's saying they are hard to get. Found this.

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3805667&posted=1#post3805667

I placed my order for one. I called the manufacturer first to get an idea of the wait time first. I forgot what they said though I think late April to mid-May was my estimate. Getting my car up on jackstands is a pain in the ass without much room to walk around and move the jack. It's a sketchy maneuver at best lifting one end up high and then the other.

I can't wait for ours to show up.

I like this quite a bit better than the maxjax solution I've been considering. Interested to see how they perform for you guys.

tire developers use something just like that at our test track. next time I'll stop and take a closer look at more details- they are super simple devices, though.

This thing looks amazing. Maybe I will survive without a three car garage and four post...

Mine showed up yesterday. I can't try it yet as I already had a car on 4 stands doing suspension work. I'll post a review once I use it.

Anybody seen much more about the 5000lb version of this? There were several forum threads in various places with the vendor chiming in, but none seem to have been updated in a while. It seems like the perfect solution for my compact 2 car garage, a Maxjax would be difficult to locate without preventing myself from storing two cars, and I can't lift much over the max height of this lift anyhow with my low ceilings. Would love to see reports from any members with either version.

Josh wrote: Anybody seen much more about the 5000lb version of this? There were several forum threads in various places with the vendor chiming in, but none seem to have been updated in a while. It seems like the perfect solution for my compact 2 car garage, a Maxjax would be difficult to locate without preventing myself from storing two cars, and I can't lift much over the max height of this lift anyhow with my low ceilings. Would love to see reports from any members with either version.

I saw discussion of a higher-weight-rated one, but AFAIK it hasn't shipped yet.

I have the 3500 pound version. I like it, but it's a difference niche from the MaxJack, because the total lift height is much lower. Think of it as a quick and easy way to put the car up on a set of high jackstands, plus portable enough that you can load it into the trailer and take it to the track.

what is the lift height? im debating between these and a scissors lift. i primarily do chassis, brake, and electrical work, but occasionally will need to do a trans or exhaust. so the lift itself would only be in the way occasionally, and i can go back to stands in my other bay.

I have about an 8' garage ceiling and the hoods of the S2000 and Volvo would both prevent me from lifting the car much more than 28" anyhow, so I don't think the quickjack would force any compromises on me. I am more interested in reports of quality, ease of use, etc. I guess. I like this idea a lot better than a Maxjax because of the flexibility and a lot better than a portable scissor lift because trans/driveshaft/exhaust work should be vastly easier.

Looking at the web site, they currently show both the BL-3500 that I have and the BL-5000 higher-rated one.

The BL-3500 frames are 3 inches high collapsed and 16.5 inches high fully extended, so you get a 13.5 inch lift. That's not a 13.5 inch height -- the car winds up 13.5 inches higher than it was when it was sitting on its wheels. This is enough that I can roll around underneath my Miata on a creeper without scraping myself on the bottom of the car. From a utility standpoint, it's like having the car up on a set of jackstands set pretty high. You cannot use a low rolling chair, however. The BL-5000 frames appear to lift an extra 2 inches (3 inches to 18.5 inches), but are too long to fit between the wheels on a Miata. Losing access to slide underneath the car from the side is a downside, but it's high enough to roll underneath on a creeper so having to come in from the front or the back is not a huge deal.

Overall the unit seems well-made. Mine didn't come with instructions (I had a very early production unit and they hadn't printed them yet), but the vendor gave me some email instructions on assembly. Assembly is straightforward, a bunch of fittings and hoses. I one minor issue in that the locking leg on one unit was a couple mm too long and wouldn't engage. I took it off, hit it with a grinder, bolted it back on, problem solved.

The videos show putting the two frames right next to each other, driving over them with the wheels on either side (do not drive the wheel directly across the frame), and then pulling them out. That doesn't work with my Miata because it's too low, I need to push them under the car to avoid them hitting a couple things. My Miata is pretty low, but pushing them underneath isn't a big deal, they slide fairly easily on my concrete garage floor. This is more of a concern sliding across asphalt, though.

The first time you raise it you are supposed to go up a little ways then down again, repeat a few times, then a slightly higher level, repeat, etc in order to bleed the air out of them. They warn that if you push it all the way up without doing this then the back pressure when it hits the top can lock the quick disconnect fittings and then it won't go down again. You need to do a little bit of this again if you take the hoses off and reconnect them because that introduces a small amount of air in the line. It uses ATF as the working fluid, and it pees a bit out when you take the hoses apart or put them back together. Not a huge amount, but make sure you have paper towels handy. I leave it assembled unless I'm going to take it somewhere, and I just store it under a car.

I have the DC unit, and it came with 6 inch long power wires with lugs on the end. I took those off and made a power cable using welding cable from McMaster, along with the hermaphroditic 175 amp battery charging cable connectors. (http://www.mcmaster.com/#battery-cable-connectors/=rmvcte) I also bought a set of jumper cables, cut the clamps off one end and replaced them with more of those 175 amp connectors, so now there's a short power cable on the unit itself, and I can connect it to any 12v battery I want with the jumper cables. I also have a cable like this running to the rear bumper on my truck that I use to power the winch on the trailer, so I can run the quickjack from that if I want.

The safety leg releases can be a bit fiddly, because you need to release both of them at the same time in order to get it to go down. There's a magic spot of tension on the bolt that will let it fall into place by gravity, but also hold for long enough to lift both of them and get back to the control box.

The control box is simple -- two buttons, up and down. It's on a long cable so you can walk around the car and check everything underneath it when going up/down.

One thing I tried with it that didn't work too well was at-home alignments. I leveled the car using the stack-of-cheap-floor-tiles method, but the quickjack has a fore-aft motion as it is lifting which drags the tires across the tiles as the suspension unloads and tends to scatter the tiles around. If I wanted to do a lot of chassis alignment setup I'd probably buy FM's hub stands for that.

Cell phone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgg4eRtpXB0 It's going to almost the full height -- just before the safety lock would engage.

Overall I like it a lot. Compared to a MaxJack or a traditional lift it's got a lot of drawbacks, but the portability aspect is a big win. I have the same 8 foot height limit in my garage, so it's a good choice for me. Even if I had room for a normal lift, from a take-it-to-the-track standpoint I could see an argument for owning both.

thank you for that review.

i think scissors lift will be my solution.

Good writeup. I think this will probably work for me. I will be using it primarily in my garage or other places where I'll have easy access to 110VAC, so I think I will opt for the AC power unit. I'd be curious about the viability of using the AC unit with an inverter, since I would only use DC power when I have no alternative, and hooking up an inverter in those situations seems like less trouble than using a battery in my garage. The height doesn't bother me, I'd consider it a simpler alternative to jackstands, and 18" is the most I could expect out of a jack and stands anyway. I like the idea of getting this for now, and when I finally have a garage that makes sense for a "real" lift, I would still have a use for this for backup/portablility or to have 2 cars lifted at once. Is there any chance of getting jackstands under the car with the quickjack in the way? If not, maybe FM should offer a package of a Quickjack and a set of wheelstands ;).

I'm not seeing any pricing listed. What do these bad boys cost?

Could get a lot of use out of this in my garage. Just being able to jack all four wheels off the ground quickly when I get back from the track would be nice. I am so sick of hot tire pick up on my "epoxied" floor.

I believe MSRP is 995 for the 3500 and 1295 for the 5000.

Yeah, the 3500 is about a grand. I'm curious to know if the difference between the two is just the frames, or if it's the power unit as well. If it's just the frames, and they're not too expensive by themselves, I might be tempted to pick up a set of the 5000 frames for the Audi.

I'm dubious about using the AC unit with an inverter, at least not any of the small, cheap ones. The DC unit sucks something like 150 amps out of the battery, I'm running it with 4 gauge wire. The specs I've seen say the AC unit lifts more slowly than the DC one, so it's probably at the 15A max on a standard household circuit.

Most of the time I'm running mine off the battery in a jump pack/compressor box that I have (something similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/Wagan-400-Watt-Starter-Built-In-Compressor/dp/B000WJEPCI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398130525&sr=8-1&keywords=wagon+power+dome). I don't use the inverter, but rather the battery clamps that are intended for jump starting (open the unit up and they're directly wired to the battery terminals, with a rotary power switch on one wire). I bought the Wagan for adjusting tire pressures at the autox or track days, so I have to keep it charged all the time anyway and it's pretty straightforward to hook it up to the quickjack.

As far as using jackstands at the same time, it's going to depend heavily on the car and where the acceptable support points are. I don't think it would be feasible on the Miata.

$995, portable, leaves the center of the car open, fast, easy, and stable. So far I love it. I got mine setup yesterday. Awesome. I have the 12v model and on a tiny moto battery it's up in no time. 10-12 seconds, I haven't timed it. I'll shoot a video and load it to youtube. I can use the high rubber blocks and skip the jacking pucks. I ordered March 25th and it shipped on April 15th, arrived April 18th. I wasn't expecting it to ship until the end of April. A million times more stable than jack stands. Much faster too. No need to drive up on blocks of wood is also great. I changed the oil last night and it was great to have that much room. Easy to get at the adjusters on my Koni shocks too.

In this photo I have the thin rubber blocks and my jacking pucks. Today I used the tall blocks easily.

http://youtu.be/EzFk30ifCnA

Carpet. Nice. I'd be worried about flambeau.

That thing looks awesome! I need to find a spare grand!

gjz30075 wrote: Carpet. Nice. I'd be worried about flambeau.

It helps to warm up the place in the winter and makes a nice surface to crawl around on. I still use cardboard sheets to catch spills and stuff. I spent a long time struggling underneath the car on jackstands working on my exhaust and getting a broken manifold stud out, long enough that I got rugburn on my shoulders from climbing in and out. That was a time I really could have used this lift and really motivated me to look around and find something. That's when I found the QuickJack.

22inches raised height?

Thats it?

CarKid1989 wrote: 22inches raised height? Thats it?

Uh, yeah. This is not a firmly anchored lift for you to put in your garage with 14 foot ceilings so that you can lift your diesel truck over your head to work on it. It's an easily portable alternative to the 12 step pain in the ass dance of floor jacks and jackstands required to get a car in position for service in a small garage or track paddock. Different markets, you know. 22" is as high as I've ever had a car on jackstands and I've managed to pull engines and change clutches just fine. High enough lift to roll around under on a creeper and easily get to all the exhaust and drivetrain parts is good enough for me, and all my garage can really handle anyway. Not to mention that the frame can only be so tall before it just doesn't fit between the wheels of small sportscars.

Anyone get an MG Midget on it? The length makes it a tight fit between the wheels.