Jack Restoration
The car we purchased from Michigan had an original jack to be used on the side of the car. While it was pretty rusty, it did appear to function and it even had its original wooden crank handle! The jack doesn’t lift the car very high but it does get both tires off of the ground, one side at a time.
Original Rusty Jack
To restore the jack we first had to cut four welds as shown in the accompanying video to disassemble it.
Cap Welds to Cut
More Welds to Cut
More Welds to Cut
Gear Exposed
Once disassembled we took the components to friend, Randy Forbes. At Randy’s, we media blasted the components with aluminum oxide. We then returned home, masked the assembly, covered the screw and painted the inside of the jack with black Rustoleum spray paint along with the gears and the inside of the assembly cap.
Masked and Ready to paint the Inside Casing
We put some grease on the gears and returned to Randy’s where he re-welded the four welds we had cut.
We painted the round bar that is inserted into the car with two coats of POR-15 black paint for durabilityand then over-coated it with the Rustoleum spray paint. We then sprayed the entire jack with the Rustoleum. The little wooden handle was still in great shape. We painted it with five coats of clear polyurethane and reattached it to the handle.
The final step in the restoration was to grease the screw and run the rod up and down a few times. The jack was then good (or perhaps better) as new.
Jacking up the car
We had not planned it that way, but we ended up putting the newly restored jack to use right away. We needed to lift the car to bleed the brakes one more time. Previously, we had used the floor jack to lift the rear of the car at the differential, but we discovered that now that we had approximately 5 gallons of fuel in the tank the additional weight dropped the rear of the car making it impossible to get the floor jack to the differential. So we used our newly restored jack to lift one side of the car, which raised the fuel tank enough that we could then insert the floor jack below the differential and lift the car to put it on the jack stands.
At the front of the car, the tie-down hoops create an obstacle for the use of the floor jack. We screwed together three 2 x 4s to make it possible to lift the car with the floor jack and also install two jack stands. However, even this proved to be problematic. When one tries to tilt the bonnet forward, it contacts the 2 x 4s before it is fully opened. So, when we take the car off the jack stands, we will cut an angle on the face of the 2 x 4s to eliminate the contact. There is always something!
Front Jacking Blocks
Bugeye Restoration Video Episode One Hundred-Ten shows the full restoration of the original jack as well as its use in lifting the car for the brake work:
https://vimeo.com/1099970250/715d09e4e4?ts=0&share=copy
As it turned out the three piece 2 x 4 stack of lumber we used for jacking up the front of the car did not work as well as we would like. When trying to open the bonnet the body came in contact with the wood and would not fully open. Bugeye Restoration Video Episode One Hundred-Eleven shows how we modified our process to get the car up in the air and then back on the ground.