Impact Wrench Scissors Jack
Mark SimpsonHaving a flat tire on the side of a busy road can strike fear into the heart of many classic car enthusiasts. The thought of crawling under your car or bending over to change your tire while semi-trucks sail by just a few feet away is a little terrifying. But planning is the key to getting your ride off the side of the road in short order.
Of course it’s a good idea to make certain your car has plenty of air in the spare tire and that you have the correct wrenches for the lug nut, locking lug nuts and hubcap removal. But before you can get your old tire off you’ll need to get your car in the air. Choosing a jack that works well with your car is the first step.
Some enthusiasts prefer the old standard bumper jack, but really those things were never that great in the day and proved to be just a little dangerous, not to mention they are also likely to scratch your chrome, twist your bumpers or even tip over damaging your car. Keep your old jack for originality at the car show but have an alternative in the trunk for those emergencies.
One popular alternative is the bottle jack. While these jacks are relatively compact in size, they do add to the weight in your trunk with their sturdy yet heavy design. Perhaps more importantly they take a fair amount of time to jack up and in heavy traffic or poor weather conditions even a little extra time can seemingly take forever.
A favorite of ours is the tried and true scissors jack. Its compact and lightweight design makes it a perfect match for the trunk of a classic car. Many of the jacks available come with nifty handles to crank them up but Mark Simpson shows us how to make these great Scissors Jacks a lot better with the help of a cordless impact wrench.
It seems cordless impact wrenches keep getting lighter and better all the time, and the latest generation are smaller and stronger than ever before making them a must have addition to your emergency roadside repair kit to make short work of stubborn lug nuts. But with the right socket this great little tool turns your scissors jack into a real lifting machine to get you off the side of the road in record time.
I'm often asked what's the best jack to have in your car? You know, you don't want to like grab that the bumper jack that you know, may be factory original with your car and start jacking on your brand new chrome plated bumper and have it slowly get scratched up and twist and everything else. All the problems we used to have with those jacks. So, you know, some guys really like to go for the bottle jacks. Yeah, bottle jack can hold, you know, lift a lot of weight and, but you don't really need to be in that situation.
And for the most part, if you are on the side of the road, you know, you got your backside hanging out in the traffic while you're trying to get your car off the ground and get the wheel replaced you. This takes a lot of time to actually get it pumped up and get your car, you know, in the air. My favorite is the scissors jack. They're, they're a bit widely available. You know, even if you can find like a good uh auto mode, you know, go to the junk yard, you'll find some of these in, in, uh, the cars still and they, the manufacturers made some good ones but a lot of times they have a, you know, a strange kind of weird pinch clamp thing.
Sometimes you'll find a few, uh, especially for the pickups that have just a nice pad up here on top. And, uh, what I like about them, small lightweight and I can get down what, wear a bottle jack based on my low profile cars, I could never get this under a lot of places in my car to get my car off the ground. But this is narrow enough that I can, uh, slide it under most cars and they usually come with like some kind of silly handle to actually get it to rotate up and even this takes some time. So if I'm gonna go on a, on a bigger trip and I know I'm gonna be miles. I usually pack a couple of things in the car.
Anyway, one of them is either like AAA drill or my impact hammer. I like my impact hammer because I know I can get those lug nuts off my wheel really fast and get the, the new wheel on. But what you can do is just take your, your, get it, grab a socket that fits on the end of your scissors jack. And in a matter of seconds you can raise that up, get your, get the tire off. You do, you're gonna move a lot faster.
And when you're done it, it's, uh, you can get lowered down, pack on the ground and get off the side of the road a lot quicker.
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