What jack to lift one corner of a Class C E450?

crasster wrote:
Bottle jack. Get several chunks of scrap lumber too for stacking. Also while we are talking, a LONG breaker bar if this is for tire changing.

...and a set of wheel chocks. Get wheel chocks regardless, but especially so if you have an older chassis with the driveshaft mounted parking brake, since lifting one rear wheel off the ground completely negates the parking brake's holding power.

Bottle jack. Get several chunks of scrap lumber too for stacking. Also while we are talking, a LONG breaker bar if this is for tire changing.

Bottle jack and assortment of wood blocks works great, and a packing blanket from HF for 5 bucks to lie on.

I do own the air hydraulic jack as mentioned on the original post and it works great. Since the Class c went bye and I have a toy hauler I keep a 20 ton bottle jack onboard.

We have a 12 ton bottle jack . It will do the heavy lifting ,if needed.

If you have the OEM Ford wheels, there's an extra 7/16" hole in the 8-hole bolt circle. On ours, the wheels were stuck and I did a lot of beating to get them off. Front offered little resistance. Rear outers, moderate. Rear Inners, Awful! I threaded those 7/18" holes with a 1/2" x 20-thread (NF) tap, and carry a boat trailer lug bolt. Cranking it down through the hole, against the hub, pushes the wheel off the rust. I installed the rear outers one hole away from directly opposite. That way the hole in the outer can be used to push against the inner. Otherwise, it'd try to screw the outer TO the inner.

I carry a 6 ton bottle jack and a torque wrench just in case. Never had to use either on the road. No problem with jacking the front but the 6 ton is marginal for the rear due to the much higher load, even with the jack positioned on the axle near the wheel. The only time I jacked up the rear was to change the brake pads and IIRC I used a short length of pipe over the jack handle for extra leverage to pump the jack up.

The biggest issue I had with the dual rear wheels was that they had rusted to the hub and no amount of prying and banging would break them loose. I finally got them loose by putting the lug nuts back on finger tight, dropping off the jack then rolling forward a short way and jamming on the brakes. That broke the rust bond. Before putting the wheels back on, I applied some caliper grease to the hub where it meets the wheels to (hopefully) prevent stuck wheels in the future.

Double-check your jack stand ratings. Sometimes jack stands are rated per pair, not per stand, so a "6-ton" set of jack stands is really two three-ton rated stands. Granted, one corner of a typical class C should not be three tons...but it's starting to get close, and if you're positioning it towards the center or overloaded somewhat or the wind is blowing hard, it's possible things could get ugly.

If you aren't going to be underneath the RV while it is lifted, but only changing a tire or something like that which you can do next to it, then the jack stand is arguably not essential equipment.

SweetWaterSurprise wrote:
I keep a 30 ton jack in my HM. Lifts the rig slowly and easily.

Is this particular MH a 4x4 unit? If so, there may be height to work that 30-ton that some of us don't have...

OP,


That Harbor Fright will lift it easily. 20-ton. Remember, the whole RV is say 14,000 or 7-ton.
Problems are:
1. Sometimes a really powerful jack (like 20) works out to be too tall to get under the axle when the tire's flat and ground is uneven.
2. There aren't very many contact points on the rear axle till you get close to the differential. That means you're lifting say 2/3 of the rear axle weight to get one pair of wheels off the ground. That's only say 6,000 or 3-ton, but
3. It gets very awkward to pump a bottle jack from a prone position under a vehicle. So, a 5-ton WILL lift it, IF you have an extension handle with room to swing it, OR you're really strong.
I have 2- 4- 5- 10- and 12-ton bottle jacks. So many because I was given most of them. Bought the 10-ton (Harbor Fright) when we got the E450, because I thought my good, big, old, and heavy 12-ton Walker had given up the ghost.
The 4-ton will lift one corner of the FRONT. The 5-ton will lift one corner of the rear but the leverage is very difficult. The 12-ton lifts the rear easily. I like the 10-ton because I've found I can get it, and a jack stand, out toward the wheel end on the rear axle and raise the coach without slithering all the way under.
Of course if you have a compressor, an air-over jack makes life really easy.

So for me, on a Class C, for that matter most any GAS coach, if I had one jack it'd be a 12-ton. I went to HF to get a 12. They were out of stock and 10 was on sale. They don't offer that size anymore, and I think an 8 wouldn't be enough to comfortably lift the rear.

The Low Profile 12- and 20-ton are intriguing. Question is do you want to pick up from low, or to be able to lift a little higher (low profile vs. standard)? I have seen double-extending bottle jacks, where they were really squatty but got good height because they had a telescoping ram, a piston within a piston. These low profile HF jacks are NOT that type.

I keep a 30 ton jack in my HM. Lifts the rig slowly and easily.