No floor surgery needed at my house. When I built the garage, I put 8" concrete on most of the floor, up to 12" in the area where the lift sits. 4000PSI concrete, with #8 (1/2") rebar on 12" centers, two layers. Tighter spacing under the lift pads. The steel in the floor is tied to the caissons and grade beams that support the north and east sides (left and rear as you look at the space from the front door). The only challenge in installing the lift was when I hit steel with the rotary hammer. Had to buy a rebar cutter bit to get through so the holes would stay round. If I'd used standard mild-steel mat, the drill wouldn't have noticed it.

You can drill a test hole in your floor and see if the slab is thick enough. While the Wed-Jit instructions say that you need at least a 5.5" deep hole, the Max-Jax instructions state a minimum of 4" slab thickness. The Wed-Jit anchors are installed a little deep in the hole, then drawn back up into the hole to make the wedge gismo expand.

It took me a few mins to figure out how the anchors work. Max-Jax ignores a few factors in their published load calcs too, like the derating for spacing between the holes. Their calcs still show plenty of safety margin for the capacity of the lift, no worries. The base plate is drilled to easily accept 3/4" bolts, if you aren't happy with the 5/8" bolts they spec. But your drilling needs to be really accurate in the concrete, with only 1/16" of walk in the bit; most folks aren't that good with the drill.

I bought the extra 6" lift pad extensions with the lift, along with a full extra set of anchors. The extensions are just enough to let me use my existing roll-around creeper seat under the car without banging my head. That added $100 to the cost. The extra 10 anchors were $25 total. That let me set a couple position options with some hole sharing. I started off with the columns pretty close to as tight as they could go against the side of the car with the arms and pads in position, figuring that it would give me max walk-around room. It's OK, but there's no way to open the car door with the car between the posts. Three additional positions total (two options on one side, three on the other) let me have the car on the lift with goth doors wide open at the widest option. I leave the columns widest so I can drive in and out easily without needing to install the columns for work.


Things I'd do differently:

1) Maybe buy a real lift instead of the Max-Jax. Maybe. I really like the ability to R&R the columns out of the way though. Otherwise the ability to work standing up on some projects would be nice.

2) Get extra hose sections and quick-disconnects for same. The supplied hoses require that the power unit is right at the nose (or tail) of the car when raising or lowering. At least one hose extension would let me wall-mount the power unit, and just deploy the hoses when needed. I will soon add the hose length from a local hydraulics shop, but it would be cool to be able to disconnect the extra hose lengths and coil them up separately.


Other interesting things: The stated 48" lift height is a little misleading, since it's not really the total available stroke on the lift cylinders, it's the max height of the lift pads at full lift. So when you think about it, it pretty much means that the car will go up a bit more than 40" from where it sits on the floor. Adding the included 3" pad extensions gives some help. You can't get the 6" extensions underneath the car without setting the tires back on to intermediate pads of some sort. Put the extensions in and lift again, and you can move the pads out of the way while you work. Same two steps in reverse to get the car back on the ground.

There are two fixed positions where a safety rod passes through the columns, therefore two safe work heights. It really needs a few more holes drilled to add some convenience to some projects. The supplied mid-height position is fine for brake and wheelwell area work while standing. Top position is Ok for undercar work sitting on a low creeper seat, but requires lifting a tire and wheel up to high chest height for instance if you are doing suspension work. A little planning helps, but a few more positions like at 12" or even 6" centers would be very convenient.

Plan on getting a well-padded hat or even a hard-hat for work under the car. Even with the 6" extensions under the pads, the lift arms are still at noggin-bashing height as I roll around underneath. No blood yet, but I'm learning not to go rolling around under there freely.

Overall, the Max-Jax was a very good purchase for me. Anything that needs a bigger lift is probably bigger than what I plan to do on the car anyway.