I'm not sure how often this is an issue forCamaro owners, but my Stealth Turbo always gave me grief whenever I wanted jack it up to work on it (especially after I lowered it)b/c of the difficulty of getting my floor jack under the car to reach the structural jacking points.

I played around with a few ideas and came up with a solution that seemed interesting enough to build a couple of prototypes and finally, to patent it. I licensing it to Harbour Freight, and they have just started manufacturing it and selling it on their website.

Attached are two jpgs of a brochure I made of my prototype. Here is a link to the listing for it on the Harbor Freight website:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=95420

Using my prototype, I can easily get the car up on all four corners and on axle stands in less than 10 minutes. Its great - you never have to crawl under the car. The production version now has a foot pedal, so you don't even have to bend down to operate the jack. Unfortunately HF didn't have a picture of the new version in use, so we just photoshopped one of my photos to make it red. That's why the footpedal doesn't appear on the website.

I've used the prototype about 100+ times already (Including 3 engine rebuilds and multiple brake / rotor and tire changes due to track wear and tear). Never a problem, and its very stable. Of course, you still need to set the car on stands though.

I brought it out to the track the other day and a most of the guys who saw it said that they wanted one. That made me think of posting this info on this site.

Enclosed is a link to a thread I posted on the Stealth forum with some very encouraging feedback.

http://www.3si.org/forum/showthread.php?t=369653

I don't want to seem too self serving in posting this info, but of course, I do get a small license fee from HF. However, it will take a long time before my patent, development and marketing costs are covered. Hopefully if someone out there is looking for a solution - this can help.


Cheers

 

that's an awesome jack, good job on the patent, your original design looked much cleaner, but it really is a nice jack.

 

wait how can u do brakes and tire changes if it lifts the car by the tires.

 

VEry nice! I plan to get a couple.

 

Put safety stands under it like your suposed to do!
Lincon has a low profile jack (others do but all I can think of now) That pumps with the handle down. That and if needed a couple of 2x4s. I think I am going to patent the 2x4 for driving the car on top of to fit a jack under it.

 

I have a full-sized mechanics lift in the pole barn...

Whay is a floor jack?

Very cool product, that would have been very useful back in the days of jacking

 

then why buy this when u can get a floor jack cheaper? if u have to use the same equipment this is a waste.

 

Prior to developing this, I was using mini ramps (I guess similar to the soon to be patented 2x4?) with a floor jack. I can't lift at the sill b/c there isn't enough structural rigidity there - I wound up crushing the metal ridge at the sill. Therefore I still needed to access thefront or back lifting points under the car. Not sure how much advancement there has been in floor jacks, but I would still have to crawl under the car to place the jack and pump it up. Even at that, I barely had enough room toreciprocate the the handle.

Again, maybe b/c I didn't have the latest in floor jacks, I always ran out of lift. The car was alreasy up on my 4" high mini ramps, and by the time the floor jack would max out I wouldn't have overcome all of my suspension travel before it would max out. Then I would need to put jack stands under the car, let down the floor jack, put a block b/w the floor jack saddle and lift again. A real PITA.

My new lift has about 17" of travel, and the beauty is that b/c the arms pick up the tire at ground contact, pretty well all of the 17" of lift acts to raise the car (minus some suspension compression). With a floor jack, 17" of full height extension is relativey common, but if you lift at a point of the car that is 10" off the ground, you only get 7" of lift.

 

Under The sill is where you put the jack that the factory supplied with your car. Usualy there are nothces in the pinch weld telling you where to locate the jack. In the body shop that is where we place the clamps for tieing the car to the frame rack. Those jacks in the down position are low and are designed to lift the car past its limit of the suspension travel so you can easily change the tire. And those jacks don't lift as high as a floor jack.

 

Very cool! I'll pass it along to some of my friends with low cars.