How to make a rolling jack with your own hands?

A rolling jack is probably the best option among other similar devices used for automotive maintenance and repair work in your own garage. With the help of this device, you can cope with many operations even without helpers. A good craftsman, of course, likes to have quality tools and reliable auxiliary equipment. Often, such specialists independently make both tools and jacks, as they say, for themselves. Consider how you can make a do-it-yourself hydraulic roll-type jack for a car.

To make a homemade rolling jack, you should accept and follow a number of rules that will provide this device with reliability, wide functionality, durability and safety of the work performed on the car. Let us list these rules and briefly describe them in understandable language.

• Future jack must have a carrying capacity, which can withstand the weight of the heaviest car, which is planned to be repaired in the future, with a margin of up to 30%. It can be a car from a personal car park or the park of your friends and relatives.

• For such work, you need to get the drawings and their description, and then, on their basis, create your own design, adjusting the characteristics, possibly dimensions or material, depending on your own preferences and the planned carrying capacity of a homemade hydraulic lift. On the Internet of such good, most likely there is a cart and a small cart. If the master knows what to do and how to do it without any outside sources, then he will still need a final diagram of the device, on which he will put down all the dimensions. Otherwise, mistakes cannot be avoided when preparing material and blanks for the jack.

• Manufacturing of such a critical device as a jack for lifting a car, requires the use of a fairly strong steel material when installing the lifting and supporting platforms. It is worth making an accurate calculation for the compliance of the strength of the future structure and its carrying capacity. The safety of the lift depends on this.

• Mobile lifts have a low pick-up height, therefore, such an important advantage of the device must be preserved in a homemade design.

• If you really have to do something yourself, then you must definitely think it over, take into account the flaws of the factory jacks and implement at least a small improvement in the device, assembled with your own hands. Let it be either a convenient handle for activating the hydraulics, or an additional stop for the stability of the entire structure after lifting the car, or a built-in lighting.

• Welding work during installation should be carried out by a competent welder, passed certification, and preferably with the use of semi-automatic welding equipment. The safety of the device depends on how the seams are welded, therefore it is better to pay the welder for a couple of hours of work at the place of his location, than to risk not only health, but, possibly, life.

• When lifting the frame of the jack must not have visible deflection, otherwise, it is necessary to strengthen the structure with additional stiffeners. And you can also remake the bearing parts, taking a more durable material for their manufacture.

Now let's see what tool, besides the welding machine and accessories to it, will be needed to successfully solve the problem of manufacturing a hydraulic lift for cars.

1. Grinder with cutting and grinding discs. It will be more convenient if both large and small impellers are available. They will cut metal blanks and grind the seams after welding.
2. Electric drill with a set of drills of different sizes for metal. The required holes will be drilled with this tool.
3. Electric sharpener, which is very useful when adjusting metal elements in a structure for welding or when installing individual parts.
4. In addition to the listed power tool, you will also need manual tools. For example, a vice, a sledgehammer, a hammer, files, a set of screwdrivers and taps, a chisel, needle files, sharpening stones, sandpaper, brushes, and so on.

From material and devices you need to prepare:

• hydraulic bottle jack (in this design, this type of lift is most often used for hydraulics);
• channels of sufficient strength, which was shown by calculations for the planned lifting capacity of the rolling jack;
• two roller bearings (will play the role of the front wheels of the lift);
• steel rods for the preparation of braces, installed in order to increase the rigidity of the structure, as well as the axles for the wheels - their diameter must correspond to the diameter of the inner ring of the bearings;
• rubber car bump (will serve as a reference point for the lifted part of the car);
• various fixing materials (bolts, brackets, pins, studs, nuts for bolts);
• other consumable, which can be useful when assembling the lift.

We will describe step by step how to make a rolling lift from a conventional type hydraulic bottle jack.

1. First, according to the dimensions of the drawing with a grinder cut blanks for a base for a bottle jack made of steel channels. For the manufacture of the support platform, the channel must be taken slightly wider than for the installation of the lifting arm.
2. Then welding is performed installation of the support platform and lifting arm (separately).
3. On a supporting platform called a swing, vertically a hydraulic bottle lifter is installed using the available fasteners, which will be the lifting force of the entire structure.
4. Now it is necessary from the same channel from which the support platform was mounted, make and weld to the last C-pillar... This part is necessary both for mounting the lifting arm and for giving the entire structure strength and rigidity.
5. In the channel at the rear of the lift arm and at the top of the C-pillar make the same holes. A pipe of a suitable size is inserted into the holes of the lever, which will serve as a movable axis when the lever is lifted under the action of the jack rod, and it is welded. Next, the holes are aligned (in this case, the channel of the lever must fit between the shelves of the channel of the rear rack) and a steel rod is inserted into them through the pipe welded into the channel of the lifting lever. This rod will serve as the fixed axis of the lifting arm. It is cut flush with the outer surface of the C-pillar channel shelves and welded to it.
6. It remains to fit all the assembled parts of the lift, build a stubborn heel on the lower surface of the lifting arm ─ in the place where the stem of the bottle lifter will abut against it. And you should also fix the car bump stop made of hard rubber on the front of the lifting arm - this place the lever will rest against the bottom or other part of the car when it is lifted.
7. Since the method of influencing the pumping of oil under the working piston is lever, then lengthening or not lengthening the standard lever for the convenience of working with the jack is the decision of the master. For the most part, you do not need to do this, and if there is a desire, then it is better to build a removable extension cord.
8. It should be noted that during the assembly of the structure, it is necessary to process all welding points (for example, to clean weld seams), to adjust parts in terms of diameter, dimensions, and so on. Otherwise, you can end up with a creaky and loose structure, reminiscent of an unlubricated cart, and not a high-quality lifting mechanism.
9. Next, you will need mount handles and casters to move the device, weld the braces to stiffen the structure and additional devices for the stability of the jack.
10. Upon completion of installation work it is necessary to check the operation of the hoist and its carrying capacity... It may be necessary to work out to increase the lifting height, as well as to eliminate other shortcomings.

Nowadays, it is advisable to make homemade jacks of a complex type with your own hands only in those cases when enough material and old devices have gathered in the garage for this, which will ensure their almost free creation. The roll-up version of the lift can be built without hydraulics - using a pneumatic jack.

You should also not forget about such an important negative side of the rolling lifting device, as its significant dimensions. This product is more of a garage type, and not for transportation in the trunk. However, for those mechanics who are seriously involved in car repairs, such a lifting unit is an indispensable assistant in their work.

How to make a rolling jack with your own hands, see below.