As a wrencher, I spend a lot of time pumping my Harbor Freight floor jack. Unless you have a lift, a hydraulic floor jack is pretty much the only option when you have to take your wheels off or just get more clearance between the ground and the vehicle’s undercarriage. But yesterday, while attempting to walk the entire SEMA show in under eight hours (I did it, narrrowly), I discovered an electric jack, and I haven’t decided whether I like it or not. I’d love your thoughts.
A contraption with a rather sexual-sounding name, the Roadtek “EJack” promises to let you take a break from all that pumping you normally do to get your car up. Instead, there’s just a simple on/off switch and an up/down button. Hit the up button and listen as an electric motor whirrs at the base of the jack, raising its lifting arm slowly but surely. Hit the down button and see as the vehicle drops fairly quickly, as a hydraulic ram releases pressure. Manual Hydraulic Jack
Here, have a look at this eJack in action:
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This jack actually won a New Product Award this year from SEMA itself. On the association’s website under the “Tools & Equipment Product” category, you’ll see “GarageMax 3T Long Reach Electric Floor Jack (ROADTEK).”
The company’s representative showed off a few different wheel designs (plastic, aluminum, caster or regular) and weight ratings, with prices for two and three ton units spanning between about $350 and $450. That actually doesn’t sound that bad.
All of the EJacks use a standard power tool-type 20-volt battery that you can slide right into place near the top of the Roadtek’s handle. Once the battery is in in, you hit this red rocker switch at the front of the handle:
That rocker switch turns the EJack on, and with the green illuminated you just hit the “up” membrane-button and the arm rises.
The jack is fairly slow when going. up, but it’s quick when dropping. I assume this is because the electric motor is turning a power screw (which is naturally slow) (EDIT: Naw, it’s definitely just a tiny hydraulic pump -DT], which is pushing a piston to raise the arm. Here’s the electric motor that makes all the noise:
And here’s the hydraulic piston — note that Roadtek would not tell me how the electric motor interacts with the hydraulic ram to create lift, so I’m just going to assume a power screw for now.
You’ll see in the image above the previous one that there’s a little yellow tab; that’s meant to be pulled in order to lower the vehicle even if the battery has died and rendered the “down” membrain-button useless.
The handle post itself unscrews from the base via an orange collar. Here’s a look at the connectors:
I’m not entirely sure what I think about this device. Per the representative at the show, a common criticism they’re hearing is that this seems lazy. And indeed, if you look at the comments on my Instagram post, you’ll read things like “Seriously, how lazy can you be? Is their target audience just getting too much exercise?” and “How lazy do you have to be?” The representative reminded me that, before power tools, people were using hand-wrenches to undo bolts. This, she said, isn’t much different in terms of the evolution of wrenching.
One of the benefits of the system is that the handle stays where you set it, so if you don’t have much room in your one car garage-for example, you can just raise the hand to the vertical spot and hit the button. You don’t have to have space to swing that handle to pump the jack.
As for drawbacks, it seems slow, I’m curious about the weight compared to a conventional jack, and I’m also curious how long the batteries last on a single charge. Plus, I’d like to know what the life of the electric motor is, and whether those switches can hold up to serious abuse that’s commonplace in a garage. I also find the long handle — which exists on a traditional jack to provide leverage — to be largely superfluous; just give us a wired remote so I can raise the jack while looking at where it’s lifting from? The Roadtek rep did tell me the motor is meant to be serviceable, and if I had to guess, the battery life is more than enough for a casual DIY’er who probably isn’t jacking up cars all day
The bigger issue is that Roadtek seems to barely exist as a company. It has pretty much zero internet trace, and its website looks like this:
So, whether anyone will be able to buy the “EJack,” we just don’t know yet. But the device has made a big splash this year at SEMA, so who knows. I could folks wanting one, especially at those fairly reasonable prices.
Given that it’s the hydraulic piston that buggers up on all my floor jacks, I’d be more interested if this was NOT and used mechanical screw action instead. FWIW: I use my 1/2″ drill and a screw/scissor jack quite regularly.
It feels like unnecessary complication,, if you’re jacking up cars all day air jacks have been around for ages. I’ve been using the same Craftsman 3 ton floor jack since the 80s so they are durable goods
Floor jacks used to be durable goods. I generally get 2-3 years out of them now before they stop pumping up. Luckly I got a surplus lift about a year ago, a small floor one typically used in tire shops that’s perfect for most jobs other than transmission work, so my use of floor jacks has great diminished.
To my eyes it seems more of novelty for people with money to burn.
I like, and need, the exercise of a nice steel floor jack so I’d take a pass.
I see a couple of missing features: 1 Not drivable like an RC car. 🙂 2 have a camera pointing up so you can see on your phone whether it is underneath your intended jack point.
Joking aside, several of my cars have a jack point right under the engine where if you place a jack there you won’t have the space to pump the handle. This would be perfect for it.
This. Getting an 80’s Monte SS into the air with that long front nose piece is an exercise in patience.
You say you’re joking, but to me that would be the killer feature that convinces me to buy something like this. As is it’s mostly just an expensive floor jack that costs twice as much as my Daytona did.
This thing has the sweet smell of Shark Tank all over it. Not to be a turd, count me out.
As long as it proves to be safe I can’t be mad at it. I like the idea of it not being moved slightly as it raises. You can get it in the exact spot you need it to be.
I expect a half price or less version to do well. Reminded me of a mind blower a friend e-mailed back in 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC0nr1wrj3M
If you’re not manually pumping, how else are you supposed to ejack?
Have someone else do it.
I saw people messing with these today. Well, first, I heard them from halfway across the room. If I didn’t already have a perfectly good jack, I’d probably look into one of these because there never seems to be enough room to pump a normal jack easily in my tiny carport.
This doesn’t look half bad. I’ve found myself having to awkwardly position a jack at a distant lift point and then pump slowly. That said, this could be a good compromise for someone who can’t use a Quickjack but wants power for lifting.
What problem does this solve? Don’t like how many times you have to pump a jack? A quick pump version seems to take care of that quite well.
What potential complications does it introduce? Electrical connections, battery replacement costs.
I don’t see this being any more than a bragging right or keeping up with the Jones, garage edition.
I’d be curious as to just how durable those electronic bits are. A lot of times manufacturers cheap out on the stupidest things like having the power switch fail after a short time, or the connection to the plug goes wobbly fast.
Or sometimes the pressure to get to market fast means they’ll choose a less rugged component that can be contracted immediately in the volume they need, rather than wait for it to be manufactured to a specific design.
If the controls could be detached from the handle and used as a remote, I could see more use. Being able to raise the jack while still being able to look under the car would be nice for lining up cars with finicky jack points.
Well since that sure looks like a hydraulic ram I’d say the motor is spinning a hydraulic pump like all the other electro-hydraulic jacks out there.
It wouldn’t interest me. It doesn’t take much effort to jack something up with a long-handled floor jack. I spend way more time setting up the jackstands under the car than I do pumping the jack, and that effort remains the same when using this E-Jack (hehehe).
If I’m rotating tires, I’m pumping the jack twice, but I’m removing 20 lug nuts and then installing / torquing the same number. An impact gun speeds the repetitive part of the process, and allows me to work from a more comfortable position. It also allows me to crack the tightened nuts (everything in this discussion sounds dirty. Thanks E-Jack.) with the wheels in the air.
I’m still going to be flat on the garage floor positioning the electric jack – so no real comfort advantage. And then I have to repeat that another 4 times to place jackstands, so no advantage there either. I guess if I had significant mobility issues this may be a problem, but getting on the floor to position this thing and the jackstands is still going to be the larger part of that problem.
I’m in when there are 4 self-positioning jack / stand combos that auto-deploy and position themselves at the touch of a button and then gently lower the car and run back to their charging station when I’m done. I’m lying. I would never trust them.
Feels like a solution in search of a problem to me.
My mind went back a few decades to when Black & Decker attempted to motorize every hand tool that they could think of. I hope this does better than the battery powered measuring tapes.
Oh man I remember a neighbour having one of those. That thing was heavy. And because of the way it wound and the bend being too shallow, beyond about three feet the tape wouldn’t stay rigid and would flop over, entirely defeating the point of the little rocker switch that automatically extended it.
I’d rather stick to the good old fashioned floor jack, and if I do want the need for something else it would be a quick lift https://www.quickjacklift.ca/car-lifts/7000tl/ Don’t need a garage with ten foot and higher ceiling for a full size lift. And don’t think I can go lower than that model since I have a 2014 pathfinder and a Kia ev6, they do weigh about the same
$350-450 seems kind of pricy for something with what looks like multiple plastic parts and now having yet another battery and charger that isn’t compatible with any of the other battery powered tools in my garage and lawncare arsenal. A quick check at HF seems to show various low profile 3ton jacks for around $130 without plastic bits…I recall my Sears 3tonner costing about $50 two+ decades ago, still going strong.
For anyone just dealing with their own cars this seems like serious overkill. The fast drop speed doesn’t seem like a benefit either, I like being able to slowly control the drop on my jack as when I swap wheels twice a year I’ll snug the lugnuts up by hand, then drop the wheel just enough to create friction with the ground, then torque them correctly, then drop it all the way and check the torque again. I’ve never had an instance where when checking them again a week later anything was looser.
Thanks for reporting on it though, I wasn’t aware of such an offering.
I bet my Sears 3-ton is the same as yours. Is yours hard to let down slowly?
I just looked at it and well, I was wrong. The Sears one died I guess (I still have/use the huge black and yellow jack stands it came with) , the one I have now is a Pittsburgh 3ton, which must have come from HF. It has a rubber cover on the lower part of the handle allowing me to twist it very slowly to release the pressure slowly so I can completely control the speed of the descent. I’m very happy with it. As I age I’m realizing that a lot of tools at HF are far better quality than one would expect and for the non-professional user (i.e. not making a living with them) are perfectly good.
My old Sears still works, but turning left to lower it sticks and i have to twist so hard that it falls too fast.
Okay, so you need to gather all the weirdest jacks and have a jack-off for the channel. (lean into it). May I recommend another challenger?
https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/tank-tough/tank-tough-3-ton-floor-jack/tnk0/tt20231
Is this something you envision being accessible to the general public, or would it only be viewable by fans of The Autopian?
That should definitely be behind some kind of paywall.
Clearly something for the OnlyFanbelts section of the site. 😉
So, we have 3 of these >>>https://volta-ion.com/ in our fleet shop. Two of the beast (that can lift a fire department pumper truck) and one of the lo-pro for the automotive side and the fire rescue ambulances.
We’ve been using them for about a year now and the only complaints I’ve heard are the lift speed and fragility of the controls on the handle.
The lithium batteries last for about 2-3 weeks of continuous heavy shop use.
The big selling point is the same “negative” you’re seeing; the ability to move the jack into position and then get down next to it (using the wireless remote control) and make sure it’s positioned correctly while lifting, and or being able to stand away while it’s lifting.
That vertical lift looks like an advantage over the sideways movement you get with a standard floor jack.
I know some real old timers (80+ years old) that are still trucking and working on their cars. Could see this helping them out for sure.
After playing with jacks all day doing a motor mount, I’m already there, and I’m a long way from 80.
So not only am I reliant on a working battery, but I’m also reliant on a hydraulic cylinder…
I hope that battery is something that you can buy from other companies, in case this outfit goes bust. You can get adapters that let you use company A’s batteries in company B’s tools, but I doubt you’d see anyone selling adapters to use other batteries in this.
I feel kind of meh about it. I’m in a tight garage so I can see the benefit of not needing to pump the handle, but at that point I think I’d prefer something more like a hydraulic pump that works in conjunction with the handle so you can use either, especially so you can finesse lowering the car. The one jack that I am lusting for however despite having 2 at home, one in the trailer, and one that lives in the race car when not racing is the powerbuilt u-jack. Far more often have I been in a situation where I can’t figure out how to both jack the car up, and also have another place to put the jack stand not where I’m working, than I do not having room to use the jack.
Layered plastic membrane switches like that get used in a lot of rough-service devices. They’re simple and inexpensive and tend to hold up better than it might look.
I can see the appeal of electric operation instead of pumping; you can wind up with vehicle overhangs that make it hard to pump a regular jack handle without smacking the bumper or whatever. This fills in the gap where air-actuated jacks have been the answer, at a lower price point.
My biggest concern is with how sturdy the handle is — how will it, and its connections stand up to wrestling the heavy jack around year after year.
Electric lift stands for heavy duty vehicles have been around for quite a while — some connected with WiFi! For smaller vehicles, one can buy electric screw jacks too. Project Farm tested consumer-grade electric floor jacks about a year ago.
I think it’s the form-factor that’s bothering David, and I get it. Maybe a floor jack should provide a bit of a warm-up to the muscles before crawling under a vehicle.
I don’t see how this is any different than the motorization of many other tools. Is it lazy? Maybe, but most of the time I still reach for my Milwaukee cordless tools when working on my car instead of wrenching by hand, and I bet anyone who owns said cordless tools does too. I’m considering buying a Milwaukee grease gun too, even though my hands can operate a manual pump just fine.
For a hobbyist like me this jack may be overkill, but if I was a tire jockey at a tire shop, not having to pump the jack 200 times a day is appealing as long as it’s reliable and the battery life is reasonable.
A lot of high volume shops that use a jacks instead of low rise lifts for tire changes use an air operated jack.
The guys in the village garage where i work use the air-powered hydraulic floor jacks almost exclusively, unless it’s going on a lift.
On the farm, battery grease guns are a lifesaver. You know how many grease zerks are on farm equipment? Too many
I mean, I own a cordless electric ratchet that I sort of regret buying because I use my standard Harbor Freight ratchet 95% of the time. I could never use an electric grease gun for my home garage use, that would be a pain.
I am very confident that the $350 plastic jack is not suitable for tire jockey use. Those guys already use a lift or a pneumatic jack.
I got a 1/4 drive cordless ratchet for my birthday. I loved and use it so much I bought a matching 3/8 one. Unless they don’t fit in the space I’m working on, that’s all I use now.
Electric grease guns are the best. It gives you one hand free for fucking around with the rusty and crudded mother squatting grease points.
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