355 Quickjack on 355

I will be dropping the engine on this 95 car this week...
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Looks like it won’t lift nearly high enough

 

How high does the car need to be for an engine out?



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I have the 5000TL and it lifts just enough. You need to use the supplied block risers and I used 2 car dollies with wood to hold the engine.

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Have you put it back in yet? I always thought it would be possible to get it out but putting back in with the quick jack would be the issue.

 

Any particular reason?

 

5000LT
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These should help give it a bit more height.


My line of thinking is to get the car up as high as one reasonably can on the quickjacks. Then use a scissor dolly to bring the engine down and back out. When servicing done, bring scissor dolly back in and raise engine into position. Quickjacks don’t move until engine is secure. Thoughts?
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Or…

Put the engine on a rubber pallet and pallet jack it into place.
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5000LT lift height - 24 inches

7000LT lift height - 24.5 inches


My understanding is you need 33 inches of lift height to pull the engine. Or is that incorrect?

 

https://www.amazon.com/QuickJack-SUV-Light-Truck-Adapter/dp/B0833YXVFV?ref_=ast_sto_dp

These gain an additional 6 inches in height.

 

If you have solid concrete, the MaxJax is perfect for dropping the motor. I was able to use a table cart with a 4x4 wood cradle to hold the motor and still have enough room to lift the car off of it.

 

Because there be very little extra clearance to use a dolly that let's you lift and help position the cradle. It will have to be very low profile whatever you end up using. That leads to relying on the quick jack to lower and position the chassis for reassembly. The quick jack isn't very good at lifting and especially holding early in it's lifting range. You have to be half way up before it's first lock. I don't like it for this exercise and I've thought it through quite a bit and have tried to convince myself since my slab is insufficient for maxjax.

 

2 post lift is best but not all of us have the luxury. 4 post lift does everything. Although you can do it with a quick jack.
With all methods, the removal of the 1,000-lb block of weight at the rear changes the center of gravity for the remaining vehicle and it tends to tilt to the front. Therefore, one needs to be able to tilt the engine to compensate for that when the engine goes back in.

 

I didn't find that was necessary as when you take the engine out or put it in, it's sitting on something so is fully supported. You lift the rear of the car away from it and then drop the car back down on it. If you decide to raise or lower the engine when it's out of the car, you'll need to remember to put it back at the same height, but that made the whole process pretty easy and no danger of the car tilting. I used the 1000lb HF hydraulic lift cart, made it pretty easy. Hardest part was lining up the engine cradle bolts, one of them may have nature's loc-tite on it now...

 

Fair points.

Quickjack also doesn’t go straight up and down adding more to difficulty. If this is to be done it has to be a scissor lift dolly or pallet jack and raising to position the cradle while the car is stagnant.

Mitch brings up a fair point with car tilt. Which means you’d want to place tall jacks at the front to stabilize the car before engine removal.

Quickjacks need to go high enough for a scissor dolly to clear. This is easiest and surest way imo.



A method I’m considering to get the car higher (perhaps 35-40 inch range) is to:

1. Lift the car with quickjacks.

2. Place the car on Race Ramps wheel cribs.

3. Lower the quickjack.

4. Stack blocks, wood, etcc… anything stable and strong enough.

5. Lift up. Should be able to achieve a greater height.





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If going to be executed with stagnant quickjack, you’d need a hydraulic lift cart 1000 lb+ duty that can raise high enough to bring down the cradle and back up when done servicing.

 

How high do these points need to be with an avg. size hydraulic dolly?
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There's one at harbor freight that many have used. I think it doesn't go down far enough though. May depend how high you stack stuff under your quickjack

 

*warning. Do not stack blocks.

 

*if you’re going to stack blocks…

 

Even their truck extensions look suspect to me. I'd favor putting some 2x like a 2x12 or whatever is needed under the quickjack.

 

Quickjack also sells frame extenders (could be another work around for 355s) which extend the height 1.5 inches. I need to ask Quickjack if those can be stacked. At least 2 of them for 3 inches. I slso need to see if they have something which doesn’t actually extend the frame.

I’d trust the truck extensions. They’ll add 6 more inches.

So assuming one starts with a 7000LT… that is 24.5 + 3 + 6 for a total of 33.5 inches.

 

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To address earlier questions, the HF lift table does not lower enough to roll the engine out. I used floor jacks to get it off the HF lift table and onto the low car dollies. I plan to put it back on the HF lift table during the installation for the purpose of allowing for more room to get the frame bolts back in. Side note on that 1000lb HF lift table: perhaps mine is defective but it does not have enough power to lift the engine so I would avoid the jacking mechanism entirely. I did bleed the system per HF instructions too.

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