While my Bendpak scissor jack has worked well for me I have to admit that the two post MaxJax looks pretty good. There are some jobs where accessing the car while on my Bendpak is difficult.
Rich
I just took a quick look at the Maxjax website. As they say, sitting in an armchair, it looks to be defying physics. Digging further I find that posts are anchored with flush mount internal thread concrete anchors. I would assume they have done their homework, as they don’t really want to be sued. That said, a lot of time in my nuclear power career, at least in the early days, was spent chasing problems with concrete anchors. Without going into all the gory details, in this application with the Maxjax, you want to be sure the thickness of your concrete meets their specs. This is not too hard, you just start drilling a hole and see how deep it is when it punches through. Another factor is the strength of the concrete mix. Generally you should be fine but there can be some poor quality concrete mixes out there, especially in residential construction. Another wild card, to some extent, is how well balanced the car is front to rear on the posts. This one can be easy or tough. If you know the front and rear axle weights, using scales, you can exactly calculate the center of gravity of the car and hopefully lift the car at that point. But most folks probably SWAG this and there is certainly a limit to what the Maxjax can handle.
If they have a decent track record, that is a good sign. Before I bought a Maxjax, I would drill some exploritory holes in my concrete floor and see if there were going to be any surprises. We used to drill 1/4" pilot holes for every pattern. Our concrete had rebars in it and you really don’t want to place a shell anchor through rebar. So just some cautions to observe.
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@tbob, you mentioned this model is “portable” but it appears to be bolted to your floor. Isn’t that “permanent?”
It’s de mountable as in you unbolt the hold down bolts, tip it back onto its wheels and roll it into storage.
What robin said.
I’ve moved it around - it is really quick and easy.
The portability is what sold me on the MaxJax. It takes 10 minutes to unbolt the columns and wheel them out of the way. I bought Allen head set screws to plug the holes when not using them.
The kit comes with Allen plug screws for that very purpose!
I found a used Finkbeiner lift for sale in NJ. It takes up too much space for me and parts could be a problem. Very clever design.
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Absolutely a clever design.
My midrise Bendpack can be moved in a similar manner. In other words, straight back and forward is possible but takes quite a bit of effort. Sometimes my feet are literally scrabbling for traction. And sideways. Forgiddaboutit.
Love the totally vacent garage space. Obviously related to the boss I had once that kept absolutely nothing on his desk when he left at the end of the day. My desk looked like an extension of the local recycling center!
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That is a slick design!!!
My Herkules platform could be moved like that too. The most difficult part was being very careful about raising the tow handle up to lower the front of the lift after moving it. The weight of the lift can put a lot of force on the end of the handle. You can see the guy in the video being careful about it too.
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Road and Track used to call many of the high tech gadgets Mercedes would install on their cars “Why Tech”. The Finkbeinder lift fits that description to a T. For every beautifully finished Tiger tank the Germans produced in the war the Russians produced 10 plus T34’s. The results of that were inevitable.
Mobile lifts have been around for a long time. This is the only one I’ve seen that gives full bottom access to the car similar to a two post lift.
I bought a Max Jax two post lift in August 2020. One of the first one’s under the new owner of the company. Installed it and love it. No problems to report.
I think a MaxJax is in my (near) future.
Used to think the lack of lift height was a negative, but this thread has prompted me to watch a bunch of YouTube videos, and I’ve revised my opinion.
One guy did a 10 year review on his, and he scoots around under it on a reclined office chair with his head supported. He makes good point; that standing under a car with your head tilted back isn’t exactly a picnic.
I watched this video. His trick with the office chair is what convinced me to buy mine. It does work, even for my 6’2” self.
John is it really portable and do the arms easily reach the limited jack points on a FHC ? I too have a low ceiling and limited floor space so a lift for me would need to store up against the back wall but roll out to the car once I got it into the garage. I have tight clearance between the back of the house and front of the garage. On the more spacious bay I have to bring the car in at an angle thru the door and then straighten it out. I therefore don’t have room to leave the posts in position on the sides while moving the car into the garage. Once parked though I do have pretty good clearance on each side. As I get old and less flexible I really would like to find a lift that would work in my goofy garage.
David
68 E-type FHC
I think one beauty of the MaxJax is that you could conceivably have two sets of holes in your floor for wide and narrow cars.
If/when I get one, I plan to survey the E-type guys for their distance between posts, then decide if that will work for my wider cars.
I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here but I will reiterate that your life is depending on the strength and installation quality of 5 concrete anchors. Really, with their design, only 3 anchors on the outside edge of the plate are doing all the work. I just looked again at their website. The anchors shown seem to be a wedge action flush mount anchor. Obviously, people are installing the product and are able to provide testimonials, so it must generally work. Here is what I would be concerned about and maybe some mitigation strategies.
- Wedge anchors depend on friction for them to grab the side of the hole. The size and texture of the hole is important. Using new concrete bits would be advised. Fortunately, bits wear smaller and in general a hole that is too tight is better than too loose.
- When you install a wedge anchor, it slips upward a little as the wedge action engages. You will want to “set” them below flush because if they are flush when you torque them, was this because you were lucky and they gripped right at flush or did they stop moving up because they hit the bottom of the Maxjax fixture? You can “test in place” each anchor by making a little bridge of plates such that when you torque them you can see that they gripped and aren’t just bearing against the bottom of the baseplate.
- The pattern required for the MaxJax is fixed, although there may be some wiggle room due to an over sized hole in the baseplate. When we set anchors in this situation, it was always a crap shoot that we would get (in this case) 5 good holes. You can hit a piece of hard aggregate. You can hit metal reinforcement in the concrete. You have to get a hole of sufficient depth to meet 1 and 2 above. If you don’t, you may have to shift your pattern and start over.
- If you want to get a pretty much guaranteed installation, hire a concrete contractor to saw a square hole in your floor. Make sure it is at least 4" deep or whatever Maxjax calls for. Have him insert lateral “dowels” (pieces of rebar) into the cut face. Fixture the Maxjax base assembly in place with the shell anchors assembled to it. Fill the hole with concrete. Repeat for the other side. In effect you are installing a dedicated footer.
It sounds like a lot of work but if one column lets go, it will happy quickly and you may be the new support point for that side of the car. I suspect the Maxjax lawyers have them cover all this in the formal installation instructions. Lawyers are helpful like that. I’m more in the trust but verify camp.
One final comment. The Maxjax website has a quick blurb that says each anchor is good for 16,500 pounds. This is a little disappointing to me because that must be an ultimate strength capacity. We usually apply a safety factor of 4. Just saying.
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Yes, good warning, and you’re not the first one to bring it up. IIRC several folks have substituted their own anchors, at least some using epoxy IIRC. I have no idea if that helps or not, but I do know that many have been concerned with the OE anchors.