JACK OF ALL TRADES

4X4 AUSTRALIA’S EDITOR-AT-LARGE, RON MOON, HAS BEEN USING A FEW DIFFERENT JACKS FOR A RANGE OF WORK DUTIES ... AND HE’S MIGHTILY IMPRESSED WITH A FEW NEWCOMERS

- RON MOON

I TOOK the ol’ high-lift jack off the Patrol the other day, after returning from a long desert and Cape York jaunt. It’s the first time I’ve removed the jack from its roof-rack mount in a year or two, maybe even more.

It’s not that I’m fed up with carrying it and not using it much (a typical lament about high-lift jacks from many I’ve heard), it’s just that I’ve come across a couple of better pieces of kit. But anyway, for a start, let’s go back to the basics.

BOTTLE JACK

MOST good 4WD vehicles come with a bottle jack for lifting a vehicle to change a tyre – and in most cases they are the basic screw-type jack that are simple, strong and reliable. They aren’t particularly user friendly and the foldin-half or two-piece handle that comes with them can be frustrating to use. Most people, from the short survey I did, carry more than one.

Still, they have a place in our tool kit even though one of the major disadvantages of a bottle jack – whether screw or hydraulic – is their height when depressed. They are often too tall to slide under an axle at the preferred spot when you have a flat tyre. At the other end of the game, their fully extended height often isn’t high enough to remove a flat tyre or fit a fully inflated tyre.

One thing you really need for a jack (of near any sort), for those situations off-road, is a jacking plate, which can be as simple as a piece of milled timber – say about 300 x 200mm and 15mm or so thick. Or you can buy a custommade base plate that a bottle jack can lock in to. For years, I’ve just carried a piece of wood and it works fine.