Many DIY mechanics found that the easiest way to raise and lower your car on a budget is combining a power drill and scissor jack.

Sometimes, even the thought of dragging out your jack stands and going through the boring motions of lifting your car off the ground is enough to delay us from important car maintenance.

But, what if I told you I can speed up that process exponentially because I can.

By combining the awesome torque of a battery-operated or plug-in power drill and that dusty scissor jack you have in the back of your car, you can raise and lower your car in seconds. Check out this DIY video below to see what I mean.

Warnings!

There are several warnings and pre-cautions I’d like to go through if you attempt to use this car hack. It goes without saying but cars weigh thousands of pounds and if you slip up on your lifting technique, it can cost life and limb.

First, make sure you are lifting on a flat and level ground, it doesn’t matter if you’re lifting your car up by hand-power or this power-drill technique; you do not want your car tipping over or falling on you because physics and gravity takes over.

Next, you want to lube the threads on your scissor jack throughly before using a drill. Heat causes metal to expand and if those screws are spinning too fast, they’ll heat, expand, bind, shear, and strip the threads off your scissor jack.

If you don’t have an extra jack to lift your car off that broken one, you’re S.O.L.

Lubrication not only provides a thin barrier between the screw hole at the end of your jack and threads, it absorbs some heat as you lift your car.

Also, you do not want to use an impact wrench like some people on Youtube do. Although you probably can get away with that technique a handful of times, scissor jacks weren’t built for the Bam-Bam-Bam torque from impact wrenches.

You’ll want to use a battery-powered or plug-in drill.

The gif below uses an impact wrench but just disregard that fact and imagine there’s a bog-standard battery drill there instead.

Finally, you’ll want to practice this lifting technique away from a car first. Apply slow and gradual pressure to the trigger of the battery drill so you don’t overwork your scissor jack and build up too much heat.

If you’d like to make this process that much easier, they even sell Scissor Jack adapters for impact wrenches and drills. You can find these on Amazon if you search “Scissor Jack Adapter.

Lifting and lower your car can be a chore so hopefully this little technique makes it easier for you.

Have anything more useful to add? Let me know in the comments below.

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