Jeep Adapter

Tired of silly dinky floor jacks that barely raise your Jeep enough to change a tire?

Me too. After seeing a so called "SUV Adapter" on  friends floor jack, I decided to make my own. (he wouldn't sell it to me, and I got tired of always having to borrow it)

With some scrap tubing left over from the roll cage and a wire feed welder, I was in business. Follow along to see what I did.

Here is what I started with.

Yup, that's a Harbor Freight 2 ton Floor Jack.

I don't know how, but they call it a "Pro-Lift". I think my mechanic would hurt himself from laughing too much if he saw that label. But, I'm not a pro, and it works fine for me. I'm only going to use it to lift one side of an axle at a time, so the 4,000 pound rating is just fine. The entire 715 only weighs about 5,500 lbs.

The problem with the jack "as-is" is that the maximum height is only 15 inches. The rear axle sits @ about 13 inches with an inflated tire. Take a look at the picture at the top of this page.

This doesn't leave much room and also only uses the jack at its fully extended length. At and near the fully extended position, the saddle of the jack moves fore and aft too much. Either your truck's gonna move, the jack's gonna move, or your load will slip off. Not very useful.

The front axle sits at about 9 inches above the ground when measured under the spring pad. I extended the saddle height by about 4 1/2 inches as a compromise. Also, this was the length of a scrap piece of pipe that I had lying around. Trying to cut pipe square without a chop saw is not easy.

For the saddle that came with this jack, a 2 inch diameter tube worked perfectly. I used a tube slightly smaller in diameter, since it was closest to the length I wanted.

Here's the extension that I made.

Now, I'll admit that I cheated a bit and stole another saddle off of another floor jack, similar design but an older model that was rusty and not very useful. Except for finding the extra saddle if you don't have a beat up floor jack to steal from, it's quite easy, as you can see from the pictures.

I welded the saddles to both ends of the pipe. The hardest part was making sure the saddle was level on BOTH ends. I didn't want the pipe sticking up from the jack at an angle.

When I want to use it, the adapter just sits in the saddle of the floor jack. Don’t forget to re-insert the cotter pin that secures the saddle to the jack.

With the adapter, the minumum height is now just about 9-10 inches, depending on how much dirt you have under your truck!

The tape measure body is 3 inches, plus the 7 inches, obviously gives 10 inches of minumum height. Perfect for lifting M-715 axles up off the ground.

Here's the Jeep Adapter in action.

The tire is about an inch off the ground here and the jack still has the ability to lift some more before getting outrageously tall.

Obviously, I wouldn't use this as a support device. Nice, big STURDY jack stands go underneath and the floor jack is lowered whenever working under or around the truck.

This was an easy project for me that only took about 2 hours, and a lot of that time was figuring out what height was best out of all the scrap tubing that I had. If I planned this ahead, it would have taken me only a hour, tops. It sure beats buying a whole new floor jack just to get the adapter when it was so easy to make my own.

And of course the usual disclaimer applies. I am not recommending that anyone else re-create this project. I am only telling you want *I* did. This is not intended as a "How-To" project.

Oh, and yes, images are still © Ethan Brady 2006