Max Jax installed (sorry Nick)
 

Nick offered to help with this job so often that I feel bad for going it alone. I need to give him a shout out for being so kind. Our plan was for him to come do the heavy lifting ( and there was a lot of heavy stuff to lift) while I sat on the beer keg and gave him orders (right Nick?). That sounded like a lot of fun. In the end the confluence of time, need, and opportunity arrived Sunday and I went for it without his help.

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I started out with a dry fit of the shortest car I expected to use the lift for, in order to get the posts far enough apart.

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I rented a rotary hammer with a 7/8 bit to drill the holes for the mountings. The concrete is 12" thick in this area, so I pushed the instruction's "minimum 5" deep" to 6".
The holes for the floor plate mounting bolts all had this slot. I'm assuming it had something to do with manufacturing, as I don't know of an engineering reason to do this.

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All installed, ready to go.

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As soon as I get some other projects out of the way I'm going to put a 90 degree street ell on this hose fitting to mitigate this trip hazzard. This is really a bad place for a loop of hose to be.

Great job!

I really need one of these so I'm a little jealous

Slots around the holes are because the steel plate is cut in one pass of the water cut/plasma cutting machine which speeds up manufacturing

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i needed to do a quick check of the brakes on the '65 VW so it was my first patient. If anything went wrong I thought the VW could weather a little damage better than one of the Porsches.
The lift works smooth as glass. No problems at all.

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'56 coupe on the lift and ready for surgery. I'm pulling the engine tomorrow and installing new transmission mounts.

This post is why I still believe. Even sans accoutrements. Thank you.

very nice, I installed mine a few years ago though I must admit I don't use it as much as I would like. I went with the epoxy set anchors.

I do get some funny looks from neighbors walking by with a car on a lift in a residential neighborhood.

With all that ceiling height. why not a full height lift?

Oh suuuuuuuuuuure... strip me of the joy of work during the summer in a warm garage :)

Hey wait! I thought I was supposed to be the one sitting on the keg of beer while barking orders ??

BTW.. I have been fighting a cold (yes it's just a cold... but I can't taste my beer for some reason :) ) the last few days so I wouldn't have been able to come help anhow.

Glad you got it installed.

Oh it was a hot garage - 90 degrees and 90% humidity. I would have relished watching you "help" (ie carry heavy stuff) and I'm sorry you couldn't have enjoyed the experience.

The ceiling is only 10' so i wouldn't have been able to stand under a car and work on it if I wanted to. I'm OK with scooting around on a wheeled stool.

I find myself doing that even though My lift will go high enough that I can stand under the car.

Word of advice: Get yourself a couple support stands to put under the vehicle. I'm not sure there's any such thing as being too safe. I always have a set under my vehicles when they're up on a lift. They don't have to hold the vehicle unsupported by the lift. They just need to be able to keep the car from falling on you if something should happen to the lift.

I love those little chairs/stools on wheels!

Really nice work, Patrick. Congrats and thanks for sharing.

Please continue posting more pics, where possible. Would like to see where you placed the jack pads, especially.

Stay safe!

What is the capacity of those max jaxs? they look like a well built product Nice job,

Just looked it up....$2,875 for the standard package.

That's not bad!

https://www.maxjax.com/maxjax/

Patrick - how did you get this unloaded from the delivery truck? Thanks!

^^
It was shipped in a wooden box weighed about 1000 lbs. It cost about $2800 inc standard shipping plus $75 for a truck with a lift gate. The truck driver was great, but wouldn’t try to get a 40 ft trailer down our lane. Unloaded it on the road. I moved it the last 500 feet with the pallet forks on my tractor. He didn’t report use of the lift gate since he couldn’t get near the barn, so +$75 !!

They claim 6000 lb capacity. They seem basically well made, but the pre-rusted hardware and the poor installation instructions make me wonder where else corners were cut.

Don't feel bad. My Challenger CL10 v3 didn't have the best instructions either. But no rusty hardware. I got lucky and bought my lift from a dealer that did his own installs.

Sorry, looked taller in pic. I had 10-6", barely enough for my 4 post, and I had to notch the ceiling to fit a 2 post.

You will likely have to replace the hydraulic quick connects if they are still the same cheap ones i got. I called tech support for clarification on the epoxy anchors and got some of the most nochalant answers which seemed technically incorrect to me as an me.

I think it is a good and unique product but definitely unimpressed with danmar as a support company, hopefully its better under bendpack now.

6000 pound capacity, so you could potentially stack both Porsches and the VW and lift away!

I'm purty jellyass looking at your 'scene'. It's a mean scene.

LOL! No way its ever going to see more than 3200 lbs. Glad you're jelly, (is that a Bhi Bhiman reference by any chance? "Don't be jelly, that's my bread and butter...":))

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She aided in the installation for sure. Keep watching this thread for possible modeling of the new machinery.

https://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/1084478-just-throwing-these-out-there-3.html

Is that the same lift that Costco sells?

Been using mine for 5+ years now and I lift the car just so I don't have to bend over so much (in addition to crawling underneath). I'm old and tall...
A few things: mine had a slight chatter. Cat hyd oil sells an additive that gets rid of it.
For those intermediate heights that don't fit the slide bars, use a couple of jackstands. One blown hose and you and your car will be happy you did. I bought drip-less hydraulic fittings from another company (a decadent touch).
You'll love love love having a lift. Enjoy

I'm going to be changing the plugs on my tub soon......and now am thinking I need one of these so I don't have to lean over so much! :D

I also have new shifter bushing and boots coming. But a jack isn't going to help much with that job.....

Thanks for answering our questions, Patrick.

This is one of the better threads we've had in a while.

Seriously.

Stay safe, please!

I thought the advantage of the max jack was portability? Given it is bolted in, what made you chose that system?
Just curiousity, my atlas two post asymmetrical is good for 12k pounds, and only ran me about 2200 CAD new.

On a different note, the guys above make a valid point, I use my lift more on the Porsche to lift it up and work on the engine comfortably from above than I do to take it high and work the underside. Super improvement on the back standing comfortably with the engine not below your waist.

That's where they start the flame cut I think...

Did the kit come with the anchors?

I chose it so that when I don't expect to be using it I can unbolt one or both of the lifts and stack them against the wall in order to have more parking space.
The anchors came with the kit.

Could the Speedster fit underneath the coupe? Sorry if already discussed.

Ah, that makes sense. I made the assumption it was on studs like mine not bolts. Mine I could move without a ton of effort, but I would have a bunch of dangerous studs sticking up out of the floor.

Yes,but if I'm going to park something under a car it would most likely be a golf cart or lawnmower. Old cars leak.

Max Jax
 

I installed one of these a few years ago. I decided that I wanted something more solid than a 4" slab to anchor it to so I cut out a large H shaped area, dug down about 3 feet, layed in some rebar and then poured the hole with high strength concrete. The lift will pick up 6,000 lbs and the base insert weighs a bit more than that. The way it is installed I can use it to pickup any vehicle I own without worrying about anything coming loose. I realize that what I did is probably overkill but I sure feel safe working under it!

I planned for this when I had the building built and told the contractor I wanted at least 6” of 5000 lb concrete. I thought he would form up a rectangle that was deeper in the area of the lift. Nope. He just scooped out a trough tha is 12” deep in the center and tapers up to the regular 4” slab depth. He said the extra concrete was cheaper than wood for the forms and the labor for building and placing it.

I have a single post, cost me 2500 euro
It's full height, my garage isn't , but it's movable, and when not used, takes up no space in the middle

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I have a trolley cart/seat so it's really just as easy to work on as full height
if need be, can roll it outside and go full height there.
no anchor bolts needed
it's self balanced, perfectly stable

slapped on an LED strip to the pole so plenty of light now

The MaxJax portability is one thing, another is -- for low height garage ceilings.

if i push the button long enough, I can raise the ceiling
(not really installed an IR sensor on a kill switch)

After installing the Max Jax and using it I really like the machine. It would have saved probably an hour of installation time if the instructions hadn't been so screwed up. So I sent the company a note letting them know what I thought of their instructions:


I have installed my Max Jax M6K and used it to raise a couple of cars. I just wanted to say a few words about the assembly instructions.
The quality of the machine itself seems to be adequate, but the assembly instructions provided with the lift leave a lot to be desired. It is critical to operator safety that this sort of product be assembled and used correctly, and I wonder why you didn’t put more effort into providing clear and thorough assembly instructions.

The paper instructions that came with the Max Jax were not clear, appear to have incorrect information, and the accompanying photos are blurry and difficult to make out.

In the end, in order to get the Max Jax assembled and functioning I had to use two sets of instructions, the the paper instructions that came with the lift (Rev A – September 2020) and a set of instructions that I found on line (https://www.maxjax.com/pub/media/downloads/MaxJax-Two-Post-Lift-Installation-Manual.pdf). The two sets of instructions gave conflicting information in key areas. I made it work, but not without a lot of extra time, effort, and guesswork.

1. In spite of the instructions saying the male quick-connect fitting will fit through the rectangular hole in the frame after the plumbing fittings were assembled to the cylinder I was unable to get it through the hole and had to remove it and reinstall it. It later leaked and I had to remove and install the whole assembly again.
2. Your instruction manuals describe two different ways of bleeding the cylinders. Either run the cylinders up and then open the bleeder screw or open the bleeder first and then run the cylinder up. Are the two methods equivalent, or is one better than the other?
3. Also, there is confusion about the flow divider. Page 29 of the paper instructions that came with the lift is a TSB (TSB69-082828) that states categorically that the flow divider sent with my lift will not work if installed as described in the instructions. First, why would you send a part with the lift if you know it will not work? If I followed the TSB the supplied inlet hose would not be long enough to reach the IN port. Based on the information found in the on-line instructions I ignored the TSB and installed it as shown on page 28 of the paper instructions and in the on line instructions. The machine works fine. Why would you not take the time to make sure the instructions match the machine they accompany?
4. Finally, the paper instructions show photos of one configuration for installing the springs for the safety latch while the on-line instructions show a different way. Installing the springs as per the blurry photo in the paper instruction seems to be the only way to make the safety latch work properly, but I may be wrong. Can you clarify? This is a safety item and I want to be sure it is assembled correctly.
Thank you for your time.

Product support is bad. They treat it as a consumer product that anybody with access to a rotary hammer can install. That is true to some degree but there is alot of nuance they gloss by.

For example, I am pretty sure putting shims under the front bolt increases the loading on the anchors by a factor of around 3. The reaction moment arm length to support the load is substantially reduced if the front of the plate is above the floor. I could chalk it up to my imagination, except they used to show their factor of safety calculations on the site which showed the full width of the front plate dimension in the calculation. Worried me enough that I did not use the shims.

When you buy the epoxy anchor kit, they say you need 5" of slab depth, well the anchors are 6" long. I had my slab scanned and it is right about 6" deep. I called them to enquire and was told to jam coffee filters in the hole if I drill though. The anchors are not designed for 5" holes, they are designed for blind holes for the epoxy to be forced up the annulus as well. I am sure this is all overdesigned but "did you try the coffee filter trick" is a bit worrisome to me.