[angryBits]

At 800 miles...

I meant to do it sooner but was waiting for my QuickJack to arrive.

Couple things I discovered:
- I was surprised to find that my oil drain plug was not magnetic. I fixed that.
- QuickJack claims there is no need to bleed the pneumatic cylinders but I found it to be very necessary.
- The supplied rubber blocks are scary with the ZL1 Addons lift points. The two materials are EXTREMELY slippery together.

Before bleeding my jacks I found the car to raise a little unevenly which didn't concern me that much, but the jacks were extremely jerky under load when lowering. Thankfully I did some very low up down tests before raising it up high. The jerky motion caused one of my ZL1 Addon lift points to slip off the rubber block.

YIKES. So even though the instructions said bleeding was not necessary I did it and found the system to be smooth and even after that. In any case I also cut some wooden blocks to fit the sockets on the jacks and the zl1 addon lift points. Now the car is rock solid.

Would love to hear if anyone else had similar issues.

Clearly the jacks themselves are very strong. I have an engineering background and I feel safe with their individual design. The weak point is that the two jacks are not connected laterally and if one of the riser blocks slips due to poor alignment or jerky motion the cars weight will shift and cause one of the jacks to tuck in or out and the car will fall to one side. This isn't likely to kill you but the shifted weight will then likely cause the other jack to tuck in or out and then the car will crush you.

So my feeling is that the weak points of the quickjack is:
- The blocks are too easy to overcome the center of gravity. Too tall and slippery.
- The quickjack bottoms can slide on your floor depending on the floor material also causing lateral instability.

So I added a garage mat under my quickjacks to make them tackier and not slide. And I used wooden blocks instead of the rubber ones. The wooden blocks crush slightly (like millimeters) causing a nice solid non-slippery grip.

With these simple mods I now love my quickjacks!

Update:
Stay safe, get wheel cribs.
What wheel cribs should I get?

[mikem2104]

i've got a quick jack as well, love mine. i know what you mean about your first use, but trust me a few more cycles and it will be butter smooth. what i use to pickup just about everything now, their SUV adapters. they give you a strong and stable lifting surface, much better than the blocks. allows you to pick up the camaro from the jacking points without an issue.

i can post a picture later if you'd like

[lsp408]

Which quick jack you got?

[Ebbsnflows]

I just received my Quick Jacks last Monday. I too had to do a series of bleeds. Upon initial receipt of the QJ's, my jacks wouldn't raise AT ALL - they wouldn't even budge. I had made certain to follow the setup instructions to the T (even watching the "Official" setup video as well). After the failure to lift, I spent a hour or so on the internet, searching around to see if this was a common issue. Apparently it's not, as I couldn't find any real mention of this behavior, nor was it addressed at all on QJ's website/troubleshooting steps.
As a last effort (before calling their tech hotline), I just starting trying random things. I first bled the main-power unit. That offered no improvement (at first). Eventually I realized, in order to properly bleed it, you have to turn the unit on it's side (with bleeder valve facing straight up). That worked - the QJ's would finally raise - but they wouldn't raise to the same height. I wasn't able to get one side high enough to lock the safety/support bar in place.
Next step was to bleed the individual QJ "hydraulic shocks" themselves. After doing that, I finally had equal height and normal operation.

In place of the popular ZL1-addon jack points, I use the (essentially identical, but much less expensive) Dewhel billet jack points. They seem to work fine with the rubber pads.
I didn't experience any slippage, but I was extra cautious to make certain that they were centered on the pads (taking into the consideration the radial-shift that occurs during lifting). There was enough "meat" around the periphery of the rubber pads that a significant amount of shift would've needed to occur, for them to slip off.

I will agree though that my biggest concern is the absence of lateral connectivity/support. My garage floor is epoxied with "full flake", so it is very, very grippy to walk on, but offers practically no grip for the steel framed QJ's. To alleviate that I bought an 1/8" thick rubber mat from my local Northern Tool. It's 72" long and 40" wide - I cut it down the middle making 2 mats that are 72x20". It works perfectly as a grippy rubber base for the QJ's and will hopefully prevent any kind of "kickout" but of course does nothing to prevent potential lateral fold-in issues inherent with the 2 piece QJ design. Other than fabricating a "cross bar" that ties them together, I'm unsure what can be done about that.

[1993kramer]

Originally Posted by lsp408

Which quick jack you got?

I'm very curious too which models everyone went with?

[mikem2104]

you're asking OP which model, correct?

personally i bought the BL-7000EXT, the slx is just too short and i wanted the extra weight rating for other vehicles

[Ebbsnflows]

Originally Posted by 1993kramer

I'm very curious too which models everyone went with?

I have the the BL-5000SLX. It works well on my ZL1 and my wife's Highlander.

I contemplated the 7000 in order to cover all of my vehicles, but my daily driver is a lifted Toyota Tundra. Even with the SUV extensions, the 7000 wouldn't be high enough to lift it.

[kaamacat]

If you have a TSC (Tractor Supply Company) near you, get one of their 4'x6' Barn Stall mats. They are 3/4" thick and the material is quite dense. I cut it up into 12" squares and use them all the time for jack purposes. In fact at the track I will use a ZL1 JackPuck to lift with and stack them 8high with an aluminum/wood plate on top then lower the car.... But these will not slide... you could use as the base for your QJ or use squares under the pucks.

[JD2018_ZL1]

When you first set them up leave the connectors hand tight when first setting up and slowly send it up and you'll hear the air escape the lines and once no bubbles are coming from the oil you can tighten the fittings.

[Silveradoss573]

I purchased the BL-5000EXT last year. I found the initial setup video along with the trouble shooting videos Quick Jack has on YouTube very helpful. They state that these systems have to be bleed. This took longer than expected but no big deal really. I stood my lifts up vertical and bleed them a few times with the good results. And as stated already these get smoother the more you use them.....if properly bled. The only issue I have is the smaller air cylinders leak out over a short period of time. So I have to add some air to them before using. Other than that I'm very impressed.

[SFV1LE]

I have one of these in my garage, due to low ceiling height of a 1950 garage:

https://www.bendpak.com/car-lifts/lo...r-lifts/lr-60/

It's basically a welded together set of quick jacks, heavier gauge steel. But it's portable which is nice if I have to move it out of the way. It's placed on large sheets of heavy gauge steel to distribute weight on top of plastic floor tiles.

It came with these bendpack rubber lift blocks which are amazing and work great with ZL1 lift pads--they're very wide and long, rubber is grippy and nothing ever slips. They are indestructible, 4+ years of use mostly direct on a pinch weld and no sign of cracking or wear of any kind. This is the 1.5" thick one, they also make 3" and 6". Not cheap I know but last forever and much better than wood
https://www.gesusa.com/car-lifts/spe...ber-block.html

[SHE'Z 18]

I have the 5000SLX and it works just fine. Much like previous members have mentioned, I followed the video(s) online for the setup and bleeding portion. Afterwards, both lifts rise and descend without issues. I've also got the ZL1 (knockoff version) jack pads attached to the jack points in the back and just below the driver/passenger doors. The SLX lifts there as it won't reach all the way to the front jack points. I plan to use these lifts for all my vehicle maintenance / tire rotations. Bottom line, so far so good.

[likerage]

Originally Posted by Silveradoss573

I purchased the BL-5000EXT last year. I found the initial setup video along with the trouble shooting videos Quick Jack has on YouTube very helpful. They state that these systems have to be bleed. This took longer than expected but no big deal really. I stood my lifts up vertical and bleed them a few times with the good results. And as stated already these get smoother the more you use them.....if properly bled. The only issue I have is the smaller air cylinders leak out over a short period of time. So I have to add some air to them before using. Other than that I'm very impressed.

That is abnormal. I've had mine for two years now and have had to do zero maintenance. Might consider contacting them and asking their opinion.


As for the OP, I don't understand all this slipping you have going on. You working on a cooking sheet or something? If your aluminum addons are slipping off of the rubber blocks there is something more significant going on. The blocks are fairly large and there should be plenty of room for "slipping".


As for the lateral stability, if you got the right model you shouldn't have any lateral movement for your cars weight, unless you are hip checking the car at the highest jack point I spose. My only fear of lateral movement comes from the possibility of one side locking while dropping the car. You should see this quickly but I guess if you are on your phone and dropping the car it could be missed.


Really in the end none of this should matter since you are using jack stands as well. You are, right?

[angryBits]

Originally Posted by lsp408

Which quick jack you got?

I bought the BL-5000SLX for $1099 at Costco (on sale).

The SLX wasn't long enough with the "typical" jack points but I followed the suggestion on another thread where you could cut back some of the plastic and expose another jack point a bit further forward from the rear and this worked perfect.

No problems at all and very stable.