
The jack’s footprint also factors into its stability. The weight rating of the jack is its total lifting capacity. We evaluate all floor jacks based on these weighted metrics:

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Commercial-grade products used by professional garages were excluded due to high cost and, for many, high weight. Other selection criteria included cost, lift capacity, front profile, lifting height, reach, jack weight and appropriateness for the different vehicle categories of passenger car, sports car and truck. As such, it is essential to have jack stands on which the vehicle can be safely set down for work underneath.Īll jacks selected include a bypass valve to prevent over-pumping. When lifting any vehicle, safety is paramount. Bottle jacks still can, however, be a cost-effective choice on trucks. They have largely replaced old-school bottle jacks where the hydraulic cylinder directly lifted the car, as bottle jacks rarely fit beneath modern passenger cars. Wheel-mounted floor jacks use a hydraulic cylinder to lift a hinged section of the jack, which in turn lifts part of the car. To lift the front or back, buy one rated at 75% of the car’s weight. To lift one wheel, buy a jack rated at 33% of the car’s weight. While the market for floor jacks is vast and varied, we gathered up a short list of some of the best ones you can get, for all your car-raising needs.Ī floor jack rolls under a car and raises one wheel or one end, allowing you to change a tire or set the car on jack stands for further work. Heavier full-size SUVs, trucks, crossovers, or cars with very low ground clearance require different methods. These days, just about any floor jack can capably raise one corner of an average car or crossover SUV. Their functionality is also pretty simple-they utilize a long handle that quickly pumps up a pressurized hydraulic cylinder, which lifts up a lever mechanism and raises a vehicle. Unlike the spindly little hand-cranked scissor-type tire-changing jack that typically comes with your vehicle’s spare tire, floor jacks are considerably more sturdy and thus, safer, due to stronger construction, heavier weight ratings, and bases with wider surface areas for better stability. Floor jacks make this process smooth and easy.

Having the right floor jack though is crucially important to safety as they’re meant to suspend one end of a vehicle, which means lifting a considerable amount of weight. Floor jacks are incredibly useful tools for when you need to access the underside of your vehicle or remove a tire to perform repairs or maintenance. If you’re planning to do some work on your car that’s a bit more involved than just giving it a good cleaning or tossing out those stale Starbucks cups, chances are you’re going to need a floor jack, sometimes called a shop jack. While we work hard to provide accurate and up to date information that we think you will find relevant, Forbes Home does not and cannot guarantee that any information provided is complete and makes no representations or warranties in connection thereto, nor to the accuracy or applicability thereof. The compensation we receive from advertisers does not influence the recommendations or advice our editorial team provides in our articles or otherwise impact any of the editorial content on Forbes Home. Second, we also include links to advertisers’ offers in some of our articles these “affiliate links” may generate income for our site when you click on them. This site does not include all companies or products available within the market. The compensation we receive for those placements affects how and where advertisers’ offers appear on the site. First, we provide paid placements to advertisers to present their offers. This compensation comes from two main sources.
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