Automotive Jacks – 2 Are Better Than One

The more you get into working on cars the more you realize the advantage of owning multiple automotive floor jacks. In my case I actually own so many I’m a little embarrassed to say the exact number, but it’s close to 5 for sure. The funny thing is now that I’ve got that many there are times when having that extra automotive jack can really come in handy.

One perfect example is when I was swapping out a transmission on my Acura Integra race car last year. I used two automotive jacks to raise the car rather high up off the ground on both front/side jack points. At this point I could of slid jack stands under the car and set the car down on them, giving me both floor jacks back, but since I had the extra ones I didn’t have to worry about it. I still put the stands under there for safety, but then grabbed my extra floor jacks.

Now I can support the actual motor with one jack and a 2×4 of wood long enough to loosen all of the motor mounts and remove the ones attached to the transmission. That last open jack is perfect for sliding under the transmission as we removed it from the motor. Now instead of having to lug the transmission down to the floor, taking a chance of hurting ourselves or dropping the transmission and chipping the case, we could let the automotive floor jack take the weight and slowly lower the transmission to the floor, then tug on the jack to easily slide it from under the car.

I have some friends who don’t like doing it this way because they say it’s faster to just grab on to the transmission and pull it out, but when it comes to safety and doing things right, those extra floor jacks really did help. It’s important to note that not all of my automotive floor jacks are really high end expensive ones. The ones I used to let the transmission down for example was an extremely cheap 1 ton jack that I got for around $35 dollars.

I did spend quite a bit on 2 of the jacks I used though simply because when it comes down to being under the car, I want to make sure I’ve got a floor jack I can trust holding the car up. Same goes for the jack stands. I have two sets. One cheap set and one really nice steel set with large holding teeth so I know it can take the weight of even the heaviest trucks. So there you have my quick story on why I have way to many automotive floor jacks.