Titan's air jack lifts your car with hot air, can't be used for a game of volleyball
By Tim Stevens 
posted September 3rd 2008 10:11AM
posted September 3rd 2008 10:11AM
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posted September 3rd 2008 10:11AM
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More like ,CAN be used as a voleyball :)
I would hate to see this "bubble" burst. Hehe.
I would not stand near the thing while it was raised, which limits the usability to fun and games.
Be a pretty heavy volleyball :) and stinky. Is this necessarily good for your engine?
It's perfectly fine for your car- it's mainly been used in Northern countries with lots of snow, and these types of devices have been around for a while.
Also very good for lowered cars that can't clear a normal sized jack.
Three important questions in my mind are:
1. will this thing split it it airs up against the undercarriage where there is a sharp or jagged piece of metal?
2. will the likely huge backpressure from the balloon put undue stress on the engine (esprecially with the rotary in my rx8).
3. with multi port exhaust won't this system be useless?
donka, donka
There would be an increase in backpressure, I do wonder how they deal with that, seems like it's just an air balloon with a check valve.
On my car, this would be all but useless unless it can hook up to a dual exhaust. I could put it on one pipe but the exhaust will just all go out the other, thanks to my crossover. I can seal one exhaust with my hand at idle and the flow doesn't even flinch, just redirects out the other side with very little pressure.
Definitely not anything new. Been used in endurance off road racing for a while. Except with dedicated compressors.
and honestly, why buy a Jeep Rubicon and put street tires on it??? I'll trade you my 98 jeep tj thats 2wd at the moment, that way we both benefit. Since obviously they don't plan on taking it offroad. geez.
thats no Rubi, Its an X with Rubi badges.. it also has x stickers, no sliders, the wrong wheels.. etc etc..
As far as the jack goes, It works, Ive done a trail repair in the mud because of a broken trackbar and it worked flawlessly.
Ah yes, good catch. I havn't really kept track of the JKs too many options and models to keep straight. I feel better now. I hate seeing Rubis with street tires. But an X with Rubicon stickers means it can go more places.
Oh, and how come you had to jack it up to fix a trackbar? Just curious. I broke my front one off at the axle. Bad mounting on my part (HP D44) and all the zip ties and bunjee cords in the world wouldn't keep it tight. Any small crack in the road going over 15mph would set the wobble off. Got to autozone and made a new mount using the broken one and two 3" exhaust clamps. Tube Dia was 3" too. drove two hrs home w/o a problem.
Damn springs keep falling out too trying to get off the trail.
Props to the old guy for the calf-high white socks.
What the.... This is old...
http://www.4wd.com/productdetails.aspx?pid=72X10
Same to me - I thought this has been around for years, although I always wondered which damage this would do to the engine.
With my luck, the Titan would probably blow out too.
Anybody else notice that when the air jack was fitted to the exhaust that... it never lifted the FJ. On the other hand, it seems like they are using some kind of air compressor, but we never get to see it. Boo on them for telling us that it can run on car/truck/SUV exhaust. Boo!
It is not recommended, however, to inhale the contents of this balloon after you are done.
What if you overdo it and it pops ????!!!!
Then you shouldn't have overdone it?
Action...action...action?
Anybody else notice that when the air jack was fitted to the exhaust that... it never lifted the FJ. On the other hand, it seems like they are using some kind of air compressor, but we never get to see it. Boo on them for telling us that it can run on car/truck/SUV exhaust. Boo!
The whole point of the airjack is not to lift the vehicle 2 feet in the air like the photo of hte jeep.. It's designed to get the tires up a couple inches to either change a tire out, or in most cases lift a tire to be abel to stuff rocks or sand ladders under the tires to gain traction. It is not something you would use to jack a vehicle up to work under.
I have the ARB version of this product and it works great with my FJ.
Forgot to put in first reply.
Also it can be used with exhaust or a compressor. I use mine with exhaust to get it filled, then use a CO2 tank to fine tune the amount of lift I need.
It really didn't take all that long. If you started it and then went to work loosening your lug nuts, a normal height truck would be off the ground by the time you were finished. They also didn't mention sand. If anyone spends time driving on the beach, something like this is perfect since most jacks would just dig in.
Similar items have been used in moving very large and heavy objects like houses since the early 1990's and maybe even before that.
This is very very old, saw it 5 years ago at least
*POP*... CRUNCH!
These things are VERY useful in a sandy desert !! Saved me from a very laborious dig-out in Dubai...
my questions is that a regular jack needs to be placed on certain spots under the car in order to not break anything, can this ball go anywhere? or does the ball need to go on the same spots?
A regular jack puts all its force in a small area; you'll crush those parts of a unibody not properly shaped (to maximize contact area) and reinforced (to increase the pressure it can take).
This spreads it out over a large area regardless of shape, and the large area lowers pressure. The only thing to watch is that you don't put it under a hot exhaust, and jack it up into contact with the exhaust. I expect it would melt nicely after a few minutes of good solid contact with hot metal. :)
What more concerning me is the size of that mans socks! There up to his knees!
Yes, but, will it blend?
That's a lot of wasted gas...
Uhm correct me if I'm wrong... but the proper use of this product is to have another car to inflate that thing for you? Soooo what if nobody stops to help you on a highway or you can't get a buddy to come out? You still gotta call AAA or use the product unsafely by using the vehicle with the busted tire to inflate the jack?
I have been offroading for 3 years now, and been getting bi-monthly catalogs from Quadratec (an offroad distributor) and they have had this exact thing (maybe not the same brand name, but same color, and everything!) for ever. This is extremely EXTREMELY old news.
i think i'll stick with my hi-lift, doesnt take an hour to jack up and it can be used as a winch too :)
You can be used as a wench too...
(-:
WOW engadget, if you can jack BOTH wheels off the ground in under 3 minutes flat then congrats, but for the rest of us who DONT carry around 2 jacks and lot of experience with them, this will save a lot of time and energy. dont put down a good product because the final outcome of its purpose isnt *instant* like computer software.
good one zues god? what little duche. in response to the OP, you can visually see when the car is off the ground right? thats all the lift you really need, and by the looks of it, the bubble isnt even at full capacity yet.
There were commercials for a similar product in the early 80's. It showed grandma changing her own car tire on the free way. Not that being first to market is all that important, because apparently it didn't take off. Seems that the off road community has found a practical market for balloon jack and I'm happy to see it's still around. As for the socks...
:j
At first it seems like a good idea, until you realize:
- It takes up more storage space (much bigger than a small jack).
- You have to mess with folding it up and winding up the hose.
- Once you're done with it, you have to take the time to deflate it which will be a pain, especially out in the rain and in slightly muddy areas (which will also make folding it up a real mess - good luck keepin' your shirt clean with that).
- You'll be deflating a giant ball full of gas fumes which is *real* unhealthy and stinks - the remnants of which will seep out as you store it in your trunk or wherever else.
- Isn't a good idea if you have to raise up your own car because you'd have to keep your own car's engine running to inflate it (if you don't have another car around to help). NOT a good idea and would increase risk.
- Risky if punctured.
So, uh, no thanks... I'll pass. Give me a normal jack: smaller, faster, safer, easier, cleaner, no running engines needed, and no stinky fumes.
Good luck with that in sand, mud, or the like...
It has got it uses. But of course it's not gonna be your only jack.
(And I'm not sure what you're talking about other jacks being smaller; a hi-lift sure isn't. The cheap, tiny scissor jacks that come with cars are next to useless, so I hope you're not comparing this to them, but to other general purpose jacks.)
Yeah, well, I've managed to live my entire life without an "inflatable ball jack", so I think I'm gonna be just fine, LOL.
But I suppose if you're driving in a lot of soft sand and soft mud, it would have it's uses. But even with that said, it's certainly a niche product - most people will have no use for it, and those who would ever make use of it would most likely do so on a rare occasion. Besides, how often do people get flats on soft sand and soft mud? They can get stuck in those instances, but flats?
Can't you just rev your engine to make more exhaust, thus filling it faster?
This technology has been around since the late 1970s or early 1980s. The only potentially new wrinkle is how you treat the cushion to withstand the temperature of a fully-activated catalytic converter.
Saw it 3 years back
These things have been around for close to twenty years, talk about slow news day.