How to Use a Scissor Jack to Raise Your Car Truck or SUV

In this video, I'm going to show you how to use a scissor jack. There's many different types of scissor jacks. You have this one that has a groove right in the front and a support right there. This one has another channel. Most of them have channels. This is an interesting one. Now, there'll be a spot on the car where that piece is gonna go. Another channel. And then also bottle jacks, gonna be very similar. So why do they call this a scissor jack? Well, simply, there's two pieces of metal here and here and the same on the other side. And in the middle, there's a threaded rod and so like a pair of scissors, when you tighten this threaded rod, it brings these pieces together and it's gonna open up just like that. And as that opens up, the center of the jack is gonna go up. Just like that. And to go down, you just unscrew the threaded rod and it goes down.

You wanna make sure your car is in a good location. You don't really wanna be on a hill, you don't wanna be in the dirt, you really wanna be on pavement so that it is safe. Make sure you chock the wheels either with a piece of wood or find something to prevent the wheels from turning when you're going up and make sure you put your parking brake on. Now, these jacks are emergency-use only. They're only supposed to be for just to get you out of a jam. Don't be doing any weekend projects with these where you're gonna replace a wheel bearing or a tie rod or something like that. They're just for emergencies.

Now on the side of the jack, some of them actually have a key that shows you where you should place the jack and it says right on there, don't have it on a hill or anything. Same with this one. This one's a little bit better where you should place it under the vehicle and make sure you put the parking brake down. Check your owner's manual if you're not exactly sure. And they normally come with a tool that's gonna work on the end of it so you can raise it and lower it. And we're gonna take the scissor jack and just place it under the vehicle. The pinch weld is located right here. And for this vehicle, there's two little tabs right here and right here. You wanna be in between those two tabs. That's where the strongest part is to lift this and you wanna line that pinch weld up with that groove. Watch your fingers when you get close.

All right. So that's lined up on this side and it's also lined up on the other side. We can use the tool, tighten it up. As you could see, it's gonna raise the vehicle. It takes a long time but it's gonna be safer doing it this way. Now if you are changing your tire, you would have wanted to loosen those lug nuts up while the jack was still in the ground and then you can take the tire off, swap the tire real quick. You wanna work as quick as possible. You don't want the vehicle set up like this for too long. Now to lower it, you're just gonna reverse. It's the same as going up. Just loosen up this screw and just slide it up.

So you're gonna wanna lower this, put it back the way it was when you took it out. And it's always a good idea to put it back in the location where you took it out so then you know where it is. And then you may have a jack that looks like this and it's gonna do the same thing. You just have to find the correct location on all four of the corners of the vehicle where that's gonna go and just raise the vehicle. Again, you're gonna wanna chock the wheels and put the parking brake on. Do the exact same as the scissor jack. And the bottle jack is the same idea. Put in the correct location and just tighten it up. It's gonna go up, raise the vehicle. And to lower it, loosen it up.

I hope this video helped you out whether you're on the side of the road trying to figure out how this works or whether you're preparing for the worst. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our channel. Make sure you ring that bell, turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our videos.