Well.. .. it's about time for my once a year check-in/upgrade.
Ever since finishing the Bullet back in 2011, one thing that I've always been less sure about was the simple bottle jack that I carried in case of a tire change. I'm not a real big fan of bottle jacks as they're pretty unstable. & even worse on a dirt or mud situation, fortunately I've never had a flat.
every year I've done searches for the best off-road jack only to end up looking at articles about high lift jacks. Don't get me wrong, I use to own a high lift back when I owned a '69' Grand Prix, but today I don't see that design being the best for me for several reasons:
The base plate is to small to spread out the weight of the Bullet (i know they make large base plate options)
Today's vehicles really aren't made to be lifted by the bumpers like they were in '69'
The arm that lifts up the frame is only like 5" long, hence the straight vertical column has to be too close to the body to reach any part of the frame below, & with the exception of jeeps, the bodies on today's vehicles are too curvaceous to allow the jack to get close enough to reach the frame.
I really cannot lift the back end by the body with a pivot frame
I also looked into Matjack air jacks
http://www.matjack.com/matjack-medium-pressure-lifting-cushions.html
They seemed big enough to spread the weight out, even on dirt, but at about $3500. that wasn't going to happen
Then this year I stumbled over to the recovery equipment & tools threads to find the link to the safejack site
https://safejacks.com/
I liked the idea but more importantly that site led me to the Gator Jacks page
https://safejacks.com/products/safe-jack-gator-jacks
The price was still a bit spendy, & the jack seemed a bit too unstable but after some searching around I found the maker of the Gator Jacks - Bogert International, also made an even bigger more stable jack for use on Humvees, the HMMWV jack with a large, stable removable base plate & a lifting capacity of 8500 lbs
unfortunately this is only for military use & was not sold to the public, but oddly, a quick search of ebay & $299. later, this arrived
Although it was never used, it was several years old, so I had the fluid & seals checked here at a local hydraulic shop, only to find everything in perfect condition
as you can see, the lifting end was designed to fit over a nut under the humvees not found on the Bullet
this jack allows you to not be under the vehicle while lifting with the use of a quick release hydraulic fitting & 6' hydraulic hose
plus the jack also has a large base plate to spread out the weight to under 29 lbs per S.I.
all i had to do was weld a new pivoting arm to grab the Bullet's axle points, I made a full size model to check all dimensions under all four lifting points, & made it pivot to compensate for the angle change of the lifting arms as it rises
& assembled, the jack now lifts the Bullet axles with the ease, safety & stability I'd been waiting for all this time
It is a heavy contraption, weighing in about 75 lbs total, but worth it given what I have to lift.