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My floor jack switches between “raise” and “lower” by twisting the pump handle, which I guess is pretty common. Twist clockwise until tight to raise, twist counterclockwise to lower.
My issue is that when you want to lower it, you have to twist quite hard – there is noticeable resistance. That means you have to put your weight into it a bit, and I often find that the handle will suddenly release and the car comes down much faster than I would like. This particularly sucks when you’ve got some body or engine part jacked up and you want to lower it slowly and carefully to line it up with bolt holes or mounting brackets or whatever.
Do jacks typically have some kind of adjustment for the force needed to switch them from raise mode to lower mode? Is there anything I should be looking for on the jack body that might allow me to get a much smoother action?
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🙂 With a floor jack you can try lubricating the moving parts of the handle that release the pressure. I would use some type of oil lubricant, but not necessarily WD40, as it is not a good lubricant as it is too thin and runny. With most jacks, you twist the handle to release the pressure and I would lube your handle where it mounts to the jack handle pivot. I would lube the moving pieces of the handle at the base where the teeth mesh together to make the pressure valve work. Also you may accidently pump air into the jack and this can cause a jack to malfunction. You just need to open the valve or turn your handle to the left and just pump your jack a few times to move any air out of the system. Then close the valve by twisting to the right and try pumping up the jack.
You may just need some practice slowly turning your handle to the left to release the pressure on the jack. You can practice with nothing on the jack. This will also help move the parts you lubricated already to work better. The release of the pressure will get better as you use your jack more. If you feel the car is dropping too quickly for you when you are working, just turn the handle back to the right quickly and stop it from dropping so quickly. You may also want to go to this website : garagejournal.com. Go there and scroll down to their forum site and look for the tools heading. At the general tool discussions of the forum section will be a sticky topic on floor jacks and repairing them. I have found this to be the best site for information. Good LuckIt takes practice to learn your jacks sweet spot in terms of turning force for the rod.
I recently bought one of those new designs where the jack stands are incorporated to the jack. Slam the stand into the jack, lift car, release and pull jack out while stand stays locked in place.
This particular jack has a turn dial at the end of the jack handle. Takes very little effort to turn and also controls the speed of decent too. All the controls are on the jack handle. Came with 2 stands, and if they are not enough, then the jack can also be used as a regular jack too.
I’m very happy with it. No more bending down and placing stands, or having the jack and stand fight over space under the car.
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