Making Up A Useful Hydraulic Jack
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hydraulicjack.htm-66
To make a very useful jack for all sorts of work on your
motorcycle:
Purchase the smallest, cheapest, hydraulic bottle jack
at your nearest auto-parts store. For the best versatility, if you have a choice, get
a shorter one, and be sure the one you get
has the screw top that extends upwards. The boxes these come packaged in typically
list an approximate 6 inches of possible lift movement. In
actuality, for the one's I have seen, the hydraulic piston will move a bit under 5 inches. These jacks sell for $10 or so, and every one I have seen is made
in China. I have yet to see any leak or otherwise fail.
Unscrew the top threaded part to its upper limit.
Obtain a nice piece, perhaps 2 or 3 inches long, of iron pipe.
I suggest the inside diameter of that pipe to be such that after you cut it, it
fits, but NOT SNUGLY, at any frame round tubing area that you might use it
at. In particular, the crossover at the forward end of the swing arm
seems a good size to have it fit loosely around. A couple of inches or so
diameter thus seems OK. Cut the pipe LENGTHWISE to make two halves.
I usually do this in the middle, or with a slight bias towards one side. Clean one of these
halves up...that means clean up and round the sharp edges. Weld this
one half to the top of the jack, keeping the top threaded part of the jack cooled with a wrapped water-soaked
rag.....weld such that the curved piece will be SQUARELY welded to the top.
Again...be SURE it is squarely welded, and don't just tack weld it, weld it all
around.
Just one use for this jack would be to jack up the rear cross-member, moving the rear tire just off the floor. You will
need a sturdy piece of wood to have the jack high enough. I have found a 1 inch piece of plywood, and a piece of 4 x 6, to be just
right for airheads.
The picture below contains two recently made jacks. Neither one has the iron pipe as described. The one on the left has a undercut (spot faced depression) under the milled aluminum piece, and a central hole, and I drilled and tapped the jack top piece. It is way over-fancy. I made up several of the milled top pieces....might have them here someplace, to give away. The jack on the right was one I made up in about 10 minutes, crude, and functional. If you make up some sort of jack like these, consider if you need a much larger base, perhaps of heavy metal.
One item not shown is that I have pieces of wood that fit the top of these jacks....and make the top of the jack a flat surface...so the jack can be used at places like the oil pan, and not damage the bike.
Revisions:
04/13/2003: add .htm title; clarifications
09/06/2003: add photo of two types of these jacks; minor text changes.
02/25/2005: final editing and release
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