air jacks..

[mongoose]

yeah, one of the more all show no go parts a car could have but ohhh soooo badass.. the thought came to me yesterday... and i was thinking.. that we have seem to all have things we don't really need.. but there just cool so we have them..


so i think ima have to spend some time and work these into my build.... mmmmm air jacks..

anyone else running them? or even wanted to run em..

[frankenstang]

Needs to be a two stage setup so you can service under the car as well as just changing the tires and stuff. I have thought of how cool it would be to have that setup on my car.

[Damn True]

I'll be able to show you some video on two cars you wouldn't connect with air-jacks sometime around mid-December.

[chicane67]

Kind of a pain... as it is hard to get the chassis low enough so you dont have to mount the cylinders out in the breeze where they can get damage from road debris and such. Not to mention... that you are going to have to limit the suspension droop travel so that you can actually get the suspension off the ground with the limited stroke of the air jack.

And then there is the $3k you have to seperate yourself with to just purchase the necessary components.

Cool thing to have... if your chassis can actually utilize them.

[mongoose]

yeah theres some down falls.... but with the way im building my car.. i think it's almost doable..

i was looking on ap's site and they had ones that had 12" of extension.. so not that bad.... that's enough to change tires.. and routine crap under the car if you're a skinny guy..

but i was planning on only having my frame about 4" off the ground anyways... so it should be that bad... and if you're fat like me.. you can always block the jacks so you'll get more high... ie 16" in my app.

but they're just soooo cool... sorta like running 14" brakes... or a full cage on a car that doesn't require it...

[chicane67]

Just a couple of thoughts...

Well... you cant look at it as you are going to get 12 inches of lift. Just to get the jack to the ground you loose 4... and that leaves you with 8... minus the suspension droop... that will just get the tires off the ground enough to change tires. Getting the fronts to install is pretty easy... but the rears jacks will be somewhat of a challenge. I think you are going to have to really limit the suspension droop... and that is most likely going to limit you in normal street driving... and may even become a safety issue from the lack of droop travel.

Just wondering... have you ever worked on a chassis with air jacks ?? Honestly... its not a stable platform. Well... at least not stable enough to work under without the maintance stands... and even then, its real shaky.

Im not trying to talk you out of it... just giving you the dope on using them on a street based chassis.

[mongoose]

no i haven't... they're too heavy and redundant on every car I've worked on.. and I really wouldn't work under anything without stands under it.. as i like a 3 dimensional me.. and no a 2 dimensional...

and i would think 12' would be good for tires and the like.. and the block you could put under it would take up that 4" and space... as for the droop... I can't say for certain... but i can't see it being over 5 inches... running coil overs..

the only part that im not really liking is the 300 psi you need to get them to work right..

[chicane67]

3D vs 2D... now that's funny. Point taken...

It looks like it'll work with your set-up. Your right... that would be coolio. Kinda spendy for doing tire rotations... but cool none-the-less.

I guess the next thing is... an 80lb tank (scuba) or a trip to GS Parsons for a bottle of gas !?!!

[Jim Nilsen]

I thought about this a lot once and if the rules you are playing by let you, the rollcage can be used to incorporate them. I think 26" long shfts were all that would conceivably work and it compromises the looks and placement for the cage. All of this really depends on where you draw the line on stability once it is in the air. The big problem is that the longer stroke you go the harder it is to get them to all go up at the same time and not have the car fall off of itself so to speak.

Nascar should have them but they don't, the jackman can cause all kinds of obstacles and delays and 1 less person out there is one less person to get hurt. Smokey Unick tried to get Nascar to do it but failed.

This is a nice idea but it really isn't practical except on an Indy car.

Good luck

[68sixspeed]

That and cylinder size too, if you want to have 4000lbs of lift, each cyl must lift 1000#, so on a single stage cyl (so it doesn't get too long), a 4" bore with 80psi air will just get you there; that's going to be 200#'s of crap just to lift the car! Plus if the air line breaks, ouch.

Now IF I had to do one, consider a toggle type mechanism so once lifted the linkage goes past center and the air can be removed and the car will still stay up for safety.

[CraigMorrison]

We designed a poor man's air jack system for sportsman drag racers. It was an electric tongue jack off a trailer that bolted to the main hoop of a drag car. By using an in-car switch you could lift the back of the car off the ground for changing tires, warming the rear-end, changing 4-link etc. Very cool system. Unfortunately our supplier of jacks dried up and we discontinued the part.

[69stang]

I like these, but like chicane said 3k, I don't know.

http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?form_prod_id=579,212,363_242&action=product

They have a safety collar to slide over the shaft after they're up.

[BLT2DRIVE]

The Solstice and Imprezza both had air jack sytems. At first glance I thought they were shock remote accumaltors, mounted with cool braided lines running back to between the a-arm pivots. But the lines were accessing the rounded and shouldered frame rails. The rears were mounted just behind the seats. Super-sano, fully caged cars......

[TwinSting]

Check out the new car Steve Strope at Pure Vision just finished for SEMA called the 515GTB Charger. He built in airjacks that run off an onboard compressor like you use for airbags.