Harbor Freight 24" Jack in Action

I replaced my small Sears POS floorjack with a professional floorjack, and it is much better for car work.
Here's my Harbor Freight Daytona jack lifting the front of my Prius for the easiest oil change I've ever done. I added several items to give an idea of scale. The bumper was up two full feet, and this is about how much room you have under the car after you lower onto jackstands.

This jack cost $179 after a coupon. They have some for $129, and any good jack with 23" of lift is probably just as good for a Prius. The downside to this jack is that it's big and strong enough to life a small truck, so it's overkill for a Prius. It weighs about 100 pounds and you don't want to stub a toe on it.

The positives are great: It is really easy to lift your Prius with this jack! Effortless to raise and lower. And, even better, having your Prius lifted this high makes it much easier to get underneath and work on the vehicle. I keep my garage fairly clean and I have an old yoga mat that I lay on under the car, which is pretty comfortable when working beneath.

Before this jack, if I was working underneath and I needed to grab a tool or position a light, it was a real pain. And I couldn't always maneuver torque wrenches or breaker bars underneath very easily. That's no longer a problem.

This jack in particular is very heavy duty and built for daily use in a garage. It has a beefy hydraulic pump which is easily serviceable, as well as many oil lube fittings for maintenance. I don't expect to need that for many years. Lifting and lowering are very smooth operations. Unlike my old jack, with this one, I just twist the jack handle to open or lower the valve for raising and lowering. When I release for lowering, it's very smooth and well-controlled.

I've always been a tool snob; I hate cheap tools. I always avoided Harbor Freight, and I won't buy all of their stuff, but this Daytona floor jack is excellent quality and if you have room and the money, it will make your car work much more pleasurable.

 

I have Rhino Ramps, too. They're ok if I have someone to stand in front of them to make sure I'm going up properly. But you can't rotate tires or do brakes with the ramps, and they take up a lot of space in the garage. You wind up needing both the ramps and a jack, so having just the jack (and stands) makes more sense.

 

I put those stands right where you showed me.

Your jack lifts just about as high as mine. I did see several less expensive models that go just as high, but that yellow color... I think my Daytona is for lifting much heavier cars. It's a little overkill, but the old Sears POS needed replacing and this jack should last the rest of my life.

 

The jack points are in the manual. The front one is very easy to find, close to the front. I'm using it in the photo at the top of this thread. The rear is like a piece of plastic towards the passenger side, not right in the center.

 

I could change oil on my BMW without getting underneath, either. And I could pull the oil filter from under the hood.

But there's more than just oil changes.

 

For a long time now, one of the plastic rivets which holds the oil change apron to the car was broken off. I tried to yank it off with pliers, without any luck. But when underneath the car yesterday, I got a punch and chisel and finally knocked the thing loose, so I could finally put the apron back on right. It's things like this that are better when you can lift the car up high and work on it.

 

The tiny screwdriver works great for me. But I had one fastener (a larger one) which had snapped off from a careless mechanic at the dealer. There was just a plastic stub jammed in the metal. I had to bang on it with a hammer and a punch to get it out.