Greetings and salutations from Africa to all!
Land Rover Joe here back in Africa but without said LR4, most unfortunately. The truck is still in the workshop getting modified in what I have deemed the most expensive science project ever. Hopefully she will be back on the trails in Africa soon—but it will take some time in transit. I plan on updating everyone what she looks like with the new modifications once I get my hands on her.
To the question of jacking—something that has actually caused me a lot of consternation over the years and a subject I would like to write some notes about. I have every jack I can think off: Hi-Lift, X-Jack, bottle jack, and 5-ton rolling floor jack. In fact, the only jack I have not personally used is the factory scissor jack!
For jacking, the rolling floor jack is the best: strong, no-nonsense, and I should probably just roll with it to be perfectly honest—as JWest recommends. A lot of folks in Africa actually keep their floor jack with them as it is flexible (again-easy to position) and very strong plus pretty reliable. And very safe. Off road, the floor jack will need some extra stuff to be useful like a couple big pieces of plywood (or at least cardboard)…but for all the work I have done on the truck in the garage, the floor jack has been the beast of choice. Mine uses hydraulic fluid so this is something one needs to keep on top of as well.
The X-jack is fantastic and a great off-road recovery tool, especially in soft terrain like deep sand or thick mud. Plus, it is lots of fun to see the expression on people’s faces when you throw it under a truck and just inflate it up. However…the twin exhaust of the LR4 means that you would need to cover one of the exhausts ports to operate it; my mistake when I first tried to use it with my LR4. I have used the X-jack to great effect with Toyota Land Cruisers (the HZJ-78/79/100 series only have one exhaust) and the beauty of the X-jack is speed and power: it inflates very quickly and lifts tons. The problem is that it is really just a plastic bag and is easily damaged with all the rocks, sharp metal, and hot spots under the body of a truck on the trail. Ballooning is a bit of problem but the relatively flat underbody of the LR4 (especially if you have skid plates) helps; the top and bottom of the jack face are flat. I would recommend using blankets/plastic sheeting and wood blocks to help brace and protect the plastic bag—the exhaust will melt the plastic quickly! I have used the X-jack only once with the LR4 (to lift my truck out of deep sand on a sand dune at one in the morning one night trying to pull someone else out who got stuck on the beach) and I had to use my ARB portable air compressor to fill the X-Jack. Yes…I had the X-Jack onboard but never tried it with the Land Rover…. Since the volume of air is tiny compared to the exhaust…it took about 30 minutes to fill the X-jack and lift me out. It was still pretty cool though, if you have ever had to dig yourself out of deep sand and is actually pretty easy to stow as the X-jack has a nifty bag and folds flat into a round shape about the size of our tires.
Bottle jacks are great: small, simple, portable, and reliable, but the difficulty will be having one with enough lift/height to actually bring your suspension high enough off the ground in a recovery situation. I have some but don’t carry them. The bottle jacks get easily lost or buried in mud/sand and so to use them you probably need extra stuff like wood blocks and bracing material. And you have to keep up with the fill on them…they need sufficient fluid. Plus, they could be difficult to position in an off-road scenario. Thus, I don’t use them currently but I have in the past (they have worked great with lighter Toyota’s on rocks).
There is actually nothing wrong with the scissor jack, although it is not very strong; my bush mechanic some years ago actually used mine a few times with no issues. Off-road, they can be hard to position and suffer the same issues as the bottle jack: easily sink into soft ground. But in terms of simplicity…they are probably the simplest…and hence most reliable; can be easily lubed with motor oil if dirty and rusty, don’t have complicated lifting mechanisms, don’t need hydraulic fluid, fit into your nifty compartment on the truck, etc.
If the floor jack is the king…then the Hi-Lift is the queen of jacks. Immensely strong, very versatile—and let’s face it guys: invented by American Lumberjacks something like 100 years ago—what doesn’t say tough and mountain man more than the Hi-lift! But the problems with the Hi-lift are legion… hard to keep the lifting mechanism clean (as I think Dan has discovered…I store mine in a purpose-built plastic cover on my roof-rack), all steel construction means iron corrosion, lifting (especially descending under load) can be very dangerous, and last-but-most important: there are no Hi-Lift factory jack points on the LR4. The times I have used the Hi-Lift have been basically in emergencies and I jacked directly from the Rover Racks “frame-slider” nerf bars, which is really just a steel sill guard and is not connected to the frame at all. It was not safe and could have easily damaged the sills; a Land Rover engineer I spoke with told me to knock it off…but in an emergency situation, there really is nothing you can do. My experiences and future African adventure driving warranted buying the Kaymar bumper and Tactical 4X4 frame sliders (more to follow everyone!) and as discussed those are Hi-Lift compatible jack points so I can better use my Hi-Lift. As already discussed, these will provide those jacking points (as will an ARB front bumper which I will not have but finlayforpres runs with) for the Hi-Lift. The Hi-Lift wheel lift kit to jack from the tires is really cool too…but won’t work on the LR4’s because of the suspension…which is why I think JWest and NASdiesel need all the extra bracing material. This kit works really great on low suspension vehicles where you can put a support under. In sum, as JWest noted: “the high lift is cool, but for most normal situations, there's a quicker and safer way to lift one wheel for changing.” So, while the queen of jacks maybe our favorite, the king of jacks will normally prove the strongest hand.
Hope this provides some useful information to everyone—happy trails and safe driving!
Cheers,
Land Rover Joe
