{"id":12689,"date":"2019-01-14T17:13:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T01:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/production.vansaircraft.com\/?page_id=12689"},"modified":"2019-12-12T16:24:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T00:24:26","slug":"how-to-jack-up-an-rv","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.vansaircraft.com\/faq-technical-builder-items\/how-to-jack-up-an-rv\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Jack Up an RV"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are several ways to jack up an RV, but we favor lifting the wing at the tie-down point. It\u2019s plenty strong enough. We lift one wing at a time, which leaves the airplane (tri-gear or tailwheel) with three points supported \u2013 and a tripod is a pretty stable arrangement.<\/p>\n

Since most reasons for jacking the airplane involve working around the landing gear, wheels or brakes, it helps to have the jack out of the way. The wing must come up quite a ways to actually lift the wheel off the ground \u2013 the distance surprises many people when they try it for the first time.<\/p>\n

Since purpose-built aircraft jacks are quite expensive, especially for something an individual is only going to use once or twice a year, RV builders have worked up some creative solutions. One excellent arrangement is described here and was developed by Joe Blank. It\u2019s easy to build, dirt cheap, simple to move and operate and provides stable support for the airplane. We reached back into an old RVator (remember them?) and pulled out Joe\u2019s description of building and using his jacks:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cIn the past I had constructed a couple of el-cheapo jack stand\/blocks out of 4×4, 2×4, and 2×6 lumber. They were simple cribbed stacks of scrap lumber sawn in about 14\u201d lengths and nailed together. I\u2019ve used them to hold my truck up during tire rotations so I knew they could hold a LOT of weight\u2026significantly more than my RV-6. If I could somehow make them slightly higher, stabilize them, and mount a bottle jack on them, that would work! So down to Harbor Freight I went, and just happened to find two of their 1-ton bottle jacks on sale. Sweet! I then went about measuring how high the lumber stand with the bottle jack would need to be and began sawing up a few more pieces of scrap lumber.<\/p>\n

“It turns out that about 13 layers of 2\u201d lumber (~20\u201d) was about right. I nailed up the stack, then drilled two holes in the base of the jacks and secured them with couple of lag screws. I found a bolt that fit the threads of the wing tiedown and ground the hex head to a bullet shape. Most aircraft jack have a cupped recess at the business end of the shaft, but mine didn\u2019t \u2014 just a flat face with a small hole in the middle. A couple minutes with a big countersink bit in a hand drill produced a divot big enough for the modified bolt head. The resulting \u201cball-in-socket\u201d arrangement is stable and allows relative movement as the jack extends and the wing rises.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>“A word about jacking the aircraft… \u201cBE CAREFUL!\u201d Before raising the 2-place RV series of aircraft, you must first securely anchor the tail down before raising the aircraft. Why? Since the Center of Gravity is most likely forward of the jack points, the aircraft will want to nose over. Draining or having minimum fuel onboard also helps make it lighter and moves the CG slightly aft. It\u2019s probably wise not to have wind, kids, pets,\u00a0 earthquakes, distractions, etc. in the area when performing this work as it could have unexpected results.<\/p>\n

“When done, the el-cheapo jack stands stack and store neatly in a corner or under a work bench.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are several ways to jack up an RV, but we favor lifting the wing at the tie-down point. It\u2019s plenty strong enough. We lift one wing at a time, which leaves the airplane (tri-gear or tailwheel) with three points supported \u2013 and a tripod is a pretty stable arrangement. Since most reasons for jacking […] Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":12705,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12689","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Jack Up an RV - Van's Aircraft Total Performance RV Kit Planes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vansaircraft.com\/faq-technical-builder-items\/how-to-jack-up-an-rv\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Jack Up an RV - Van's Aircraft Total Performance RV Kit Planes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are several ways to jack up an RV, but we favor lifting the wing at the tie-down point. It\u2019s plenty strong enough. We lift one wing at a time, which leaves the airplane (tri-gear or tailwheel) with three points supported \u2013 and a tripod is a pretty stable arrangement. 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