Quickjack Caster Mod

One thing I have always disliked about my QuickJacks, is how they don’t slide on my concrete floor very well.

It’s a really small thing. I like my QuickJacks a lot, they’re a very handy piece of kit and I use them a lot. The frames are quite heavy though and they don’t slide on my garage floor very well, which makes them a bit of a pain to move around and locate under the car.

I stumbled across a few mods a while back where people had modified their frames by adding little roller ball casters, or normal wheeled casters so they can roll around better. I found a set of 25mm casters on Aliexpress, and promptly forgot about them after saving to my wish list.

Recently some friends moved house and got a garage. For that garage, they purchased some QuickJacks of their own. This reminded me about the casters, so I hit the go button and they arrived on my doorstep the other day. Now I can be the guinea pig.

Before starting work on the Leaf today, I quickly popped the casters on. My 4.8mm zip ties were a tad thick, so I’d go for slightly smaller next time, but otherwise, the plan worked pretty well.

I’ve positioned them so they just lift the frames clear of the floor

I don’t know how long the casters will last, they’re only cheap ones, but they seem to roll fine for now.

When lowered, the frames are clear off the ground, which makes positioning them pretty easy. The moment you press the UP button, the frame is pushed to the ground, and the casters come off the ground, so they are only taking the weight of the frame and aren’t in contact with the ground by the time the frame contacts the underside of the car.

The only issues I found were that because my air cylinders leak and lose pressure over time, the frames wouldn’t completely lower, since they now actually need to lift themselves off the ground and onto the casters. As soon as I pumped the cylinder up to the required pressure, the frames clunked into place and the casters worked fine. I’ll need to check that before each use.

The other issue is more something to watch for, but if you connect the hoses after placing the frames, you have to be careful not to move the frames when connecting the hoses as they do move quite easily. Always recheck your position.

This level of moving around was unheard of, normally I’d be slowly dragging it across the ground

One day I’d quite like to hang them on a wall or something to get them out of the way, but I have had them for 4 years or something now and still haven’t.