If your car came with a mechanical screw jack and you’re having a hard time working the tool, you’re not alone. Most households have thrown their manual jacks in favor of something better: hydraulic jacks. These jacks are powered by liquid pressure making use of Pascal’s rule: that when you’re compressing a container, the force on all points of the container is equal.
This way, when you’re changing your tire, you don’t have to wind up the handle of the jack so many times. You just need to pump the handle of jacks. A few times and voila! It can cut down as much as 75% of the work during a tire change because these mechanisms distribute pressure more efficiently. You’ll be amazed at how easily it can lift a vehicle that’s probably 20 times its own weight.
If car owners have any misgivings about hydraulic jack, it’s the fact that they can take over a lot of the baggage compartment’s space. It’s certainly much larger than regular automotive jacks, and would even require you to bring wood or metal boards with you when you use them. The flat boards are necessary to make sure that the base of these hydraulic jacks is stable. If you’re stranded in the dessert, or even on the highway where the ground is already concrete, the base might not be stable enough. While concrete is a hard surface, more often than not it isn’t even. You might break this if you just set them up on any surface.
So would you give up the luggage space just so you can have an easier time changing your tires? Some would and some wouldn’t. Individuals who own small cars actually won’t give up what little space they have at the trunk for it. This is fine because it’s a lot easier to change the tires of a small car compared to a four wheel drive or a truck.
If you have big vehicles, however, and you do have the extra space at the back, you wouldn’t regret bringing hydraulic jacks instead of manual ones. Most four wheel drives have baggage compartments that can fit the luggage of two people, so a hydraulic jack and its floor base shouldn’t take up too much space. The spare tires of big vehicles like these are also places on a separate compartment outside the trunk. Buy a hydraulic jack only if you feel that your vehicle is heavy enough for you to need this jack type’s power. Don’t buy one if you think your vehicle is too small to carry the extra weight.
