Jack Rack Mount

If ever there was a Google image search query that you don’t want to do with the safe search mode off, it’s the unfortunate combination jack rack mount. You’ve been warned.

I’d been looking for a good way to carry my Hi-Lift Jack in/on my Jeep for some time now… Most of the time, I’ve had it inside the Jeep on the rear floor, running between the tailgate and underneath the passenger seat. It worked reasonably well, but had a number of disadvantages. Mostly I was worried about what sort of carnage it would cause in a rollover, even though I had a tough cargo net in the back.

I’d ruled out other options as well. My rear Warn bumper/tire carrier wasn’t set up for it. The spare tire mount option was out since I carry a jerry can there. The front bumper already had the weight of the winch and the associated mounting plate added. The hood mount didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. Really, unless I went for an inside mount, that just left the roof rack.

And that was an almost perfect place for it. The only real downside was having weight up higher than was ideal.

So I looked at the mounts that Hi-Lift offered and they really didn’t work. Their regular mounts were made more with bumpers in mind, and pushed the jack out too far. Garvin made mounts that are made for the Wilderness roof rack and the Hi-Lift, but $90 seemed outrageously expensive.

So I fabricated my own mounts. It was a lot of work, and I wasn’t happy with them. I just didn’t have the right tools to bend thick steel stock into the shapes I needed, and thinner steel bars were obviously not going to be up to the task over the long run.

Finally I happened across an eBay auction for some rack mounts made for the Hi-Lift’s foreign half-brother, the Jackall jack. It would work perfectly, and better yet, the set being sold consisted of the locking brackets from two sets of mounts, each of which normally comes with a locking and a non-locking mount.

I won the auction for a bit over $30, and soon after the parts arrived I had them cleaned up a bit and ready to go. After a little trial and error, I got the right positioning and bought the necessary hardware. After more trial and error (and another trip to the hardware store) the mounts were on and I was finally done. If I’d known about these mounts earlier, I could have saved myself a ton of time and effort that I’d spent trying other options. Sigh.

These mounts are very nice. The jack is tucked in very tight, which I feel is ideal. In fact it’s so tight against the rack that I had to have the one side of the jack facing out, as the other was too wide. It’s solid, and has drilled bolts for padlocks. The mounts hold the jack handle in place, eliminating the need for one of those rubber aftermarket thingies that keep the handle from bouncing around.

I consider this as Mission: Accomplished as far as my quest for a jack mount goes. The weight is up too high, and the jack is potentially exposed to damage via rollover or tip, but no solution is perfect and this one seems ideal to me in every other way.