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I have had one for 2 years. They were made by Danmar, which just went out of business. I think BendPac? bought the design. Love it. I bought another hose and mounted the control box cart, on the wall. Roller stools need to be less that 12" high.
I've had one for almost 10 years now I think. Love it! It was a complete game changer for me, allowing things like body-off restorations, and making engine swaps, etc. MUCH easier. Moved it to a second house I liked it so much. The only drawback I've seen is that if you live in a tract built home, the odds that your garage floor will be thick enough to install the flush-mount inserts for one of these and use it safely are slim. The fix is to figure out where you're gonna install the posts, break-up and remove the existing concrete (usually barely 3" deep), dig down about 9" and fill with lots of concrete. Drilling holes horizontally into the existing concrete perimeter and running rebar in a cross pattern is strongly recommended. And it's REALLY helpful to install a second set of flush-mount inserts on one side to accommodate wider vehicles. The fact that you can roll the posts out of the way when they're not being used in awesome in a home garage. It doesn't go up super high, but most home garages don't have 10' ceilings anyway. I've found that mounting the hydraulic pump assembly on the nearest wall opens up some floor space also.
I received the new Bendpak version a couple months ago. It was shipped without the pump unit, big omission. The manual is the old Danmar version without any of the changes that Bendpak made to the MaxJax. It was a terrible manual to begin with and now with all of the changes, almost useless. After calling Bendpak, they emailed me an addendum sheet but still it didn’t cover everything. Between the shipping mistakes and poor documentation, you’d think I would be unhappy but Bendpak’s customer service went above and beyond so I’m very satisfied with the purchase.
I’ve added lighting and heat to my garage and plan to use the MaxJax throughout the winter to do some work to my ‘02 Carrera. I purchased four of these stands from Greg Smith Equip - https://www.gregsmithequipment.com/2...od-Stand-SHORT to stabilize the cars, a sit down creeper, rolling drain pan, etc.
Can anyone recommend a transmission jack that will work with the MaxJax? That’s one thing that I don’t see in the market. All are either too tall or too short. There’s a modded tall jack that is commonly suggested on forums/youtube, but won’t work for the porsche. I need at least 42” tall but able to lower to below 27” to clear the car.
I bought mine a long time ago. Back in late 2015,
we had a small quake in SoCal, I was underneath, and I have not used it again. Great piece of gear!!
Wow that’s scary! Looks like you have the floor properly reinforced though. I wish I had the space for one.. It’s not the laying on the floor working on cars that hurts, it’s the days after! Getting old sucks!
I have a concrete floor in my garage that is over 5 inches deep. It is able to hold the lift. The biggest problem with installation is the screw anchors that go in the floor. I had two that didn't hold in the concrete so I had to drive them downward with a sledge hammer until they dropped below the concrete. Then I installed two new anchors that were epoxied into the floor. The pad the lift sits on provides lots of support from a square inch standpoint so the pressure on the floor isn't all that high. The cantilever torque on the anchors is the biggest issue.
My lift is 7 years old and only has two points where I can stop the lift and put rods in to prevent it from falling if something happened to the hydraulics. The M6 version had more locations and was more usable. The Bend Pack version has automatic stops that are closer together to make it easier to place the lift. To lift a C5 or newer Vette you need the lift columns placed at their maximum distance apart since the frame of the car is so far outboard. If I have the car centered exactly on the lift I barely need to extend the lift arms. If I have the car off center the lift pad will be sitting on the non extendable portion of the lift arm. The frame on my 2003 Tahoe is much further inboard and I have to extend the lift arms to reach it.
From what I can see Bend Pack took a good product and made it better.
Installed mine a couple weeks ago, apart from leaking fitting adapters where the hose connector is, it's very good. Well-built, & with the anchors sometimes it takes practice to get them set right. MUST be 5/8"gap from the washer to end of anchor before pounding it in... mine is set 120 inches apart (inside column to column measurement) & works well for my C6 AND my Tahoe.
I ordered a maxjax. It's supposed to come today after waiting almost a month. Home Depot is selling them online. Free shipping, No freight charges. It's a win win!!
Rob169, let me know if you’d like some insight on my experience installing (and re-installing) the anchors & some challenges that I ran into. MAKE SURE that the concrete is at least 5” thick where the columns will be mounted... you can drill test holes to determine the thickness as I did, however where one of the columns went the slab was not as thick as it was where the test holes were drilled, & subsequently had to cut out the pad area & dig out deeper & fill with new concrete... was not fun! PM me if you feel the need...
Do yourself a favor before you start drilling for the anchors & drill test holes in the area where you plan to put the columns, & need to make sure that a) the slab is at least 4in thick, & b) there’s no void underneath, drill the test hole completely through the slab to see if the base has settled & if there’s an air space. If both of those conditions are met then measure & drill away... mine developed surface cracks from the outer anchor holes & then the fun really started...
I ordered mine around Thanksgiving and it finally arrived about a month later. Some of the ordered accessories (oil drain, roller chair) were backordered and did not ship, but Bendpak made no attempt to communicate that with me. I ordered another set of anchors so I could use two locations in the garage. They also failed to ship those or notify me they were backordered. I began assembly and found, like you guys, that the manual is essentially useless. The manual included with the lift was the old version with outdated part numbers. I downloaded and printed the "new" manual, revision Dec 2020, only to find that although the part numbers had been updated, almost nothing else had. For example, they changed the orientation of the flow divider since the previous version, apparently. The manual says not to install it "upside down" or it won't work. But you are now required to install it oriented in what would effectively be upside down. There is no other option given the included parts. There are countless other examples. The 2 lift arms are marked "R" and two are marked "L" but there is no mention of which should be used where. It's clear that no one at Bendpak has remotely attempted to install a Maxjax with the currently included parts and manual.
A related question: my C7 Z06 is too low to get the arms underneath due to my side skirts and 3/4" lowered ride height. How are you guys getting the car high enough to get the arms underneath to the lifting points? I think the dealer uses a floor jack under the rear diff and then swings the arms under. Not 100% on that though. Any ideas?
Last edited by The_Gretz; Jan 1, 2021 at 01:55 PM.
I drive up on 2 pieces of wood shelving. 1x8x12" or 1x10x12" would work. If not use 2x10s cut at an angle, so they are easer to drive up on without pushing them. I only use 2 in the front, but my car is not lowered.
The problem with using a floor jack is you'll want to use one of the same spots on each side that the MaxJax uses. I ordered two inexpensive pairs of low height (3") ramps from Summit. They're hard plastic, so if you have a nice epoxy coated floor like mine the rears have a strong tendency to get shot out the back, even when feathering the clutch gently. I fixed that issue by getting some self-adhesive "no slip" strips from the local hardware store and sticking 'em on the bottoms of all four ramps.
Good luck,
Rick
