Well, the lift is anyway. I purchased a Quickjack 5000 to serve as the workhorse for supporting the chassis throughout this build. Pretty amazing, I placed an order via their website one day and it was on my doorstep the next! ~250 lbs and in 3 boxes. Our UPS driver was NOT pleased.

I selected this lift because it’s portable and has 2 lockable heights. Additionally, once raised, you can access the centerline of the vehicle unlike many scissor lifts. There are some high-dollar scissor lifts available which still give you access to working on the centerline of the vehicle but that was out of my budget. You can get a solid 2-post lift for about the same price but that requires modification to the concrete floor which I wasn’t willing to do. It also has an exceptionally low clearance height at 3 inches. I went with the 5000 series in lieu of the lighter duty version even though it’s overkill for the SLC because I plan to use it for my DD which is a porker in comparison to the SLC. Overall, this system checked the most boxes for my needs and price point.

If you are contemplating using this system for an SLC that has the dropped floor and you do NOT have the front lift system this won’t work for you (in fact, probably nothing will). The standard ride height is 4″. With the dropped floor option the lowest point of the chassis is now 3″. The lift itself is 3″ tall so you can squeeze it underneath, just barely. However, positioning the pads will not be possible and you’ll likely be pushing up on the passenger floor with the rail (not recommended). If your car has the front lift system engaged you’ll gain enough clearance to position the rubber pads where they need to be and you’ll have enough clearance with the taller pads to avoid making contact with the passenger floor. The rubber pads may be positioned with a great degree of adjustability in the fore/aft directions. A half inch of wood placed under each tire would give you that last little bit you need if a lift system is not installed on your vehicle.
Note that great caution must be exercised when raising the SLC as the outermost underbody panels CANNOT support any weight. Lift points must be along the frame rails.

The Quickjack has 2 height positions which can be locked with the hydraulic system stored away. I plan to keep the car in position 1 for the majority of the build. Once in place, simply disconnect the lines at put the control unit and extra lines away. The quick disconnects are leak-free and feel really great; easy and positive engagement.
The lift is surprisingly stable, shoving the car didn’t produce much movement at all – I don’t know why I’m surprised, this thing better be stable or it’s not doing its job! Note that the vehicle being raised translates about 5″ forward (or backward depending on lift orientation) at position 1, a little more at position 2 – so don’t lift it right into your garage door …



No real complaints, the system works really well and was relatively simple to assemble. About my only gripe is the system isn’t *quite* as portable as I had originally thought. Each lift weighs about 95 lbs – the photo on the front of the box shows an average looking fellow holding one in each arm. Unless that guy’s juicing with something real good there’s no way anyone’s holding one of these in each of their arms. I’ve also heard some people say they’ve transported these in their cars for use at other locations. Unless you don’t care about transporting 250 lbs of sharp metallic objects in your car, no one’s throwing this system into their trunk. So yeah, it’s somewhat portable but what’s key is it’ll be easy enough to push out of the way for storage when not in use.
Update: the folks at Bendpak (manufacturer of the Quickjack) contacted me and informed me their packaging has been updated; the photo depicting Mr Universe is no longer being used. The original Quickjack models were a little smaller, lighter, and did not feature the auto-locking safety arms. I should note there are wheels at one end of each of the lifts. You can navigate the lifts around your garage relatively easily by lifting on the opposite end and pushing/pulling the lifts to wherever you need them. I plan to store my lifts vertically against a wall when not in use to minimize garage footprint requirements.