This is a long-post. But Hopefully USEFUL.
Since I got out of my ‘teens and twenties…..and I was able to afford someone ELSE to change my tires…and since Discount Tire became prolific….. I rarely needed a jack. I always Had a hyd-jack in the garage for working-purposes…and kept a bottle-jack on the truck because of that stupid/cheap stamped-steel toy the OEM put there….. but I didn’t actually start wanting a real floor jack until I was 40 or so.
Then I bought one of those foot-long 2-ton little Red floor-jacks which I kept in the toolbox…”just in case”. (HF calls them a “trolley” jack and sells them for less than $50.)
One day while at the airport, a Friend…not me…. needed to jack his truck and I volunteered my little Red jack. What had-happend was, he had backed his truck over a bolted-down hangar-door anchor…. such that his rear axle was on one-side of that 15”-tall anchor….and the rest of the truck was on the other side of the anchor. (It was one of those heavy-duty, roll-up fabric hangar doors you see “up nawth” in snow-country…but the Texan builder/owner of this hangar thought he would save money instead of using a real, wind-proof/rated door. Those anchors would hold the fabric down-tight…but were supposed to be removed when the door was raised. My buddy didn’t see it when he backed his truck over it.)
He was stranded…. not actually “fulcrum-ed” on the anchor…the truck could roll back or forth….but he couldn’t Drive-Away!
So, we used my little Red jack to jack his rear axle up a few inches to clear the top of the anchor so we could Push the truck forward …past the anchor… planning to let the truck back Down….so he could drive-away.
It didn’t work that way.
We placed the jack under the left rear-axle tube and It jacked the 1/2 ton truck UP just fine. But when we got behind the truck to roll the truck past the anchor….(we had the little steel wheels of the jack pointed the correct directlon…. Forward…)… the truck began to “roll” toward the right-side…the little Red jack began to “slant” to the right…..just for a moment….
Then the little Red jack became a Mashed-and-Twisted Little Pile of Red jack-parts…..as it was never designed to be a Real jack. It became Junk!
The only success was that the truck had moved Just Enough….for the rear axle tube to clear that anchor. But little Red jack …or what is left of it…is in a box stored over in the junk-corner of my hangar…just in-case I ever have use for the little steel wheels. or handle. or whatever is left of that smashed little contraption.
I then REPLACED that little Red 2-ton jack with another …to carry in my truck.
Then, one-day, driving the 5-hour weekly trip from my workplace at DFW airport to my home on the ranch “down souf” …. still dressed in coat-and-tie…enjoying the steady rain we certainly needed….. the right front tire went flat. Grrr. Not a Discount Tire in-sight.
So I pulled over into a big-truck-station parking lot (Loves?) …and proceeded to try to jack the R-front tire up in the rain. The only saving-grace was my clothes were “Issued Uniform” by my employer. (Still gonna cost me dry-cleaning money tho’)
However, that little Red jack …despite being fully-collapsed….could NOT collapse sufficien tly to get beneath the lower control-arm so-as to raise the wheel. There I am in the rain…dressed totally unsuited for the task…on my knees in the gravel…making every attempted angle I could imagine attempting to jam that little Red jack Somewhere…Anywhere… it could fit to get that wheel off -the-ground.
If I got it beneath the cross-member the little Red jack didn’t have sufficient “extension” to raise the flat tire high-enough to get it completely OFF the ground….because the lower control arm would extend-lower as the truck was raised… OR high-enough to get an INflated Spare tire ONto the hub.
WHAT A PIECE OF JUNK that little Red jack suddenly became.
I ended up having to use TWO JACKS…. little Red jack beneath the crossmember to get the lower CONTROL ARM up off the ground far-enough to use the OEM cheap, stamped-steel screw-jack under the control-arm ..to get the HUB high enough to install a Spare Tire! Grrrr.!
The Point of this missive is to advise you Not to buy a cheap little 2-ton HF jack if you really want a Floor Jack you can Depend Upon. It won’t collapse Flat-Enough to get a front truck axle off the ground….AND won’t raise HIGH enough to install a fresh tire onto the HUB!
AND…it isn’t STURDY enough to be reliable as a jack to actually HOLD the vehicle up off the ground. It will FALL SIDEWAYS if any movement. of the vehicle occurs.
Go ahead and spend a couple Ben Franklins or more on a truly worthy floorjack. One that will collapse FLAT, Less than 4”…. and will Lift HIGH enough, More than 19” …. if you intend to use it on a front axle of a vehicle.
(Don’t fall for the off-road floorjacks without realizing they, due to their undercarriage-wheels, don’t collapse as far as ordinary types. Carry a sq-ft of plywood in the truck if you think you’ll need to suport a floorjack in the dirt.)
I now own 4 floorjacks. All of them are HF models 3-ton or more that retail for $250 or more. I use 3 of them in the hangar/shop area where they live.
The fourth is a 3-ton mostly-aluminum (to save weight) floorjack ….which is still in its box (hopefully never to be used) and lives in the bed of my truck, out of sight, beneath the tonneau cover. it will collapse Very Low…but jack the truck Up at least 19 inches to clear large wheels..
Hope this helps.
