Indycars have jacks built in which lift the car up when desired. Why not fit there to all cars?
I believe the jack works off compressed air supplied by the mechanices, but could easily run off the engine.
Surely this could save time changing the wheel and save carrying the jack. Also you wouldn't have to worry about the car moving and falling off the jack, as all 4 wheels would be clear of the ground.-- CasaLoco, Aug 17 2001 Superjack http://www.firststr...h=-1|13491&id=34970Looks like someone has done it. [trekbody, Oct 07 2005] A small, independent car company put built-in jacks into their flagship model. This would have been in the 40's or so. I'll try to find a link for it . . .-- quarterbaker, Aug 17 2001 While you're at it, make the jack so it can pick the car up and also move it to the right one car width so you can parallel park anywhere.-- Bonarein, Aug 17 2001 Pogo-stick cars! Yay! Actually, there are lots of fail-safe mechanisms engineered into the industrial scene--a springloaded jack that simply won't drop unless hydraulically activated, and an hydraulic line that is disabled when the engine is running might do the trick. Agreed that it has to be truly failsafe.-- Dog Ed, Aug 17 2001 The parking variant would be cool but I think that the problem with the auto jack, as originally posited is one of market positioning. Flat tyres are just too rare for potential customers to spend much extra money on such a system. At the budget end, plenty of people are put off airbags because of the £400 - £500 it adds to the price of the car. And that could save your life. An auto jack is just for convenience, really.
At the luxury end, owners are nearly always members of breakdown clubs and would call out a mechanic to change a tyre, whether or not the car jacked itself up.
I've still croissanted this though because I get depressed about how a price driven market keeps so many cool gadgets out of cars.-- gravelpit, Aug 17 2001 Same here.
Bonarein, there was a car that could pick it's own rear end up with a fifth wheel and drive it into a parking space, sometime back in the era of the Model T/A. I saw a movie of it in action at one point. Drive directly into the open spot, like a slanted parking space, engage the rear wheel and in you went. Was neat...
To make it failsafe, I'd probably make it springloaded as mentioned, but have to manually do something to activate it, like connect a hydraulic hose. This would keep it from accidentally going off, and cut the price down. Probably not enough to save the idea, though.
I'd love to have a built-in jack that just needed to be cranked, as opposed to the @&^$% scissor jack that came with my car. I hate those things, with such a small footprint they're prone to falling over easily.-- StarChaser, Aug 18 2001 [Starchaser] - I like that idea... they aren't that expensive... most caravans have one at each corner.
Totally safe and as they are attached to the car could even be used for routine maintenance. (The car won't "fall off" a built in jack.-- CasaLoco, Jan 14 2002 Shades of Speed Racer!-- phoenix, Jan 14 2002 CasaLoco: Right. I was thinking the same thing just now. It would still have a small footprint, but being part of the car it wouldn't be prone to falling over.
Would love to have a set of these...-- StarChaser, Jan 15 2002 Buy a 1962 Wolseley; they had them as standard. Even the Wolseley-badged version of the Austin 1100 had them. Hydraulic.-- angel, Jan 15 2002 And IF they can be activated fast enough and constructed heavy enough you could possibly jump over the slower car in front of you. Can you say Speed Racer's Mach 5??-- MadMax's Brother, Aug 16 2002 i saw someone who had installed hydraulics on his truck lift one of the wheels completely off the ground.. or just raise the vehicle, put a jackstand under the lift point where you would usually put the jack, then lower the vehicle back down which would raise the wheel.. if they work the way i think they do-- tazmase2, Jul 27 2003 random, halfbakery