As the title says, what are your thoughts on Hi-lift jacks? Are they REALLY the must-have weapon of choice for 4WDers, or are they just extra weight and more of a fashion statement for a lot of people?
My personal thoughts are that they aren't actually as good/useful as we're led to believe by magazines, ads, shops etc.
My reasoning behind this is firstly, obviously, they jack up the chassis, not the diffs/axles... Now that's probably handy for a stock suspension vehicle that has minimal flex, but for my GQ with a 7" suspension lift and quite a lot of down travel, the jack would have to be nearly fully extended (even a 68") before the tyre would even look like coming off the ground... I use the factory Nissan bottle jack and a solid block of wood roughly 12"x8"x2" exclusively and haven't encountered a situation yet that the setup couldn't cope with. Yes, if you're chassis deep in mud, the bottle jack will not be very useful at all, but that brings me to my second reason...
Most 4WDs these days have winches... The days of needing to jack and pack are getting fewer and further between... Simply winch out of the boghole or off the rocks/logs and then do what needs to be done. Without a winch, then yes, a Hi-lift would be useful in some cases, even to the point of being used as a hand-winch. In all my years of 4WDing, I've used a Hi-lift once, and that was to get out of a bog. I was stuck at the bottom of a gully, front wheels on top, rear down the bottom. No winch, so I used the hi-lift to pick up the rear driver's corner and simply drove off the jack then, using the jack itself as a pivot.
One benefit of a Hi-lift is the ability to easily break a bead on a tyre. However, again, this is rarely performed as most people will simply put the spare on and have the busted one repaired at a shop. Remote travel of course may require tyre repair, but the Hi-lift is a lot of space and weight just to use as an easy bead-breaker... Lie the tyre on the ground and drive over the sidewall (if there's another vehicle available...), or place the tyre under the vehicle and put the trusty bottle jack on the bead and jack it off that way...
Hi-lifts are also very dangerous if used incorrectly and with inexperience.
But anyway, these are just my thoughts, what about others? Do you find them to be the "Duck's Nuts" for 4WD accessories, or just an outdated and overrated fashion item these days?
My personal thoughts are that they aren't actually as good/useful as we're led to believe by magazines, ads, shops etc.
My reasoning behind this is firstly, obviously, they jack up the chassis, not the diffs/axles... Now that's probably handy for a stock suspension vehicle that has minimal flex, but for my GQ with a 7" suspension lift and quite a lot of down travel, the jack would have to be nearly fully extended (even a 68") before the tyre would even look like coming off the ground... I use the factory Nissan bottle jack and a solid block of wood roughly 12"x8"x2" exclusively and haven't encountered a situation yet that the setup couldn't cope with. Yes, if you're chassis deep in mud, the bottle jack will not be very useful at all, but that brings me to my second reason...
Most 4WDs these days have winches... The days of needing to jack and pack are getting fewer and further between... Simply winch out of the boghole or off the rocks/logs and then do what needs to be done. Without a winch, then yes, a Hi-lift would be useful in some cases, even to the point of being used as a hand-winch. In all my years of 4WDing, I've used a Hi-lift once, and that was to get out of a bog. I was stuck at the bottom of a gully, front wheels on top, rear down the bottom. No winch, so I used the hi-lift to pick up the rear driver's corner and simply drove off the jack then, using the jack itself as a pivot.
One benefit of a Hi-lift is the ability to easily break a bead on a tyre. However, again, this is rarely performed as most people will simply put the spare on and have the busted one repaired at a shop. Remote travel of course may require tyre repair, but the Hi-lift is a lot of space and weight just to use as an easy bead-breaker... Lie the tyre on the ground and drive over the sidewall (if there's another vehicle available...), or place the tyre under the vehicle and put the trusty bottle jack on the bead and jack it off that way...
Hi-lifts are also very dangerous if used incorrectly and with inexperience.
But anyway, these are just my thoughts, what about others? Do you find them to be the "Duck's Nuts" for 4WD accessories, or just an outdated and overrated fashion item these days?
... And you also made another good point there, that they do take a lot longer to effect the jacking height than a standard bottle/hydraulic jack...
hasser in
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