Jacking your Jeep

So the other day I had a situation where I needed to jack the Jeep to remove a wheel. So I pulled out the stock jack and tools and tried..... obviously to no avail. I didn't have anything to put under the jack to decrease the distance.... I tried my buddy's trail jack but that doesn't work without mods.

Luckily I didn't NEED to jack it up but even my floor jack under the lower control arm (dangerous I know) doesn't work well.

So my question is, now that you've lifted your Jeep, how do/would you jack it if the need arises?

Are you talking trail or street?

For the street, the stock jack will work fine for any 2" lift since the suspension droop isn't really increased at all (except if you're running longer shocks in the rear). Should be able to get the front off the ground by placing the jack under the front cradle and the rear by lifting by the axle tube.

For trail....nothing beats the xjack IMO. Have used it on multiple occasions and dont know what the hell i did without it!

oem jack works for me

The oem jack would never work on my XK. I threw that thing right in the garbage!

Like I said, the OEM jack was useless.... It worked fine until I put the 2" lift on it. So Matt, what's the "cradle"?

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm talking about street.

The cradle is the "engine cradle", also known as the subframe up front. There's a nice pad area where the rear bushing of the LCA mounts to. Also can use the notch in the LCA and jack from there.

A simple solution is to cut a 10" or so long section of 4x4 to put the jack on. Back when i had an 8" lift and 37s on my silverado I cut two 10" long pieces of 4x4 and joined them together with a piece of plywood, thereby making a solid "base" that was plenty for using the stock jack under the rear axle or front LCA.

I just watched the video for the xJack.... that is such a great idea!

I swear I tried the cradle (maybe i didn't) and it just seemed too unstable. I'll try it again this weekend.

FWIW the stock jack is too "unstable" for my liking regardless of where its used. But if its all you have to change a tire on the side of the road, it'll get the job done. I'd never use it for anything other than such situations.

At home or offroad, use a real jack floor jack. A piece of 4x4 helps with that too btw.

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Originally Posted by Matt

FWIW the stock jack is too "unstable" for my liking regardless of where its used. But if its all you have to change a tire on the side of the road, it'll get the job done. I'd never use it for anything other than such situations.

At home or offroad, use a real jack floor jack. A piece of 4x4 helps with that too btw.

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Well DUH.... LOL

My floor jack was across town in storage and we had jack stands to stabilize while we worked. We just needed to get it up high enough to get the stands under there and all we had was his Smittybuilt Trail jack that didn't work on my XK and my OEM jack.

So it brought me to the question what on earth I'd do if I got a flat. So now I'm obsessed with figuring it out before I have to figure it out. ;)

10" long piece of 4x4. Solved.

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Originally Posted by Matt

10" long piece of 4x4. Solved.

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yup and it even fits under the passenger seat.