This Disappearing Driveway Lift Setup Is a Next-Level Home Mechanic Move

Limited room for home shop space makes it tough to tinker with cars in a big city. But this dude out west has come up with a pretty sweet solution—instead of building a whole new garage, Jason Wang just reinforced his driveway to handle the weight of a portable two-post lift. Now he’s got infinite headroom to work when he wants to wrench, and can reset to regular-neighborhood aesthetic when he’s done working.

Our editor Kyle found some of the pictures Wang’s posted of his driveway on Facebook, and at first I thought it was some kind of “car guy priorities” meme. I mean, the lift looks pretty funny breaking up the long row of otherwise bland driveways. But when I shot Wang a note on FB Messenger, I was pleasantly surprised to get some extremely quick responses about the how and why of what we’re looking at here.

You will probably not be surprised to learn he’s a dedicated car guy, with a pretty elite rotation of cars including NSXs, an Elise, an S2000, and a Honda Fit with a K24 (along with a Tesla daily).

“… There was a moment when we had the [Honda] Fit lifted up so we could get the motor out from underneath the car. It was a jack, on top of a big bench lifting up the front crash bar. Super sketchy. That started me thinking that if I want to keep on wrenching, I should invest in something so I can do things safely. And every car guy who wrenches dreams of a real two post. My garage is quite narrow and short so going outside has benefits. It also has downsides. I may actually put in a new concrete pad inside someday. But for now, this setup works well enough.”

Portable lifts are not new. And while moving them isn’t exactly trivial, the flexibility of Wang’s particular setup is my favorite thing about it. But you can’t just plop these things down on your driveway without reinforcing their foundation first. New concrete was poured in the middle of the parking pad, with gravel below it and rebar. Bendpak (the lift manufacturer) specifies what you need to safely install a lift like this, and Wang told me the company’s instructions were helpful.

The exact equipment he’s using is called MaxJax; full setups cost about $6,000 or more, and while they can’t do everything a commercial-grade four-post lift can, they’re a pretty cool tool for somebody like Wang who needs to lift cars on the lighter side and be able to remove his lift when it’s not in use. The thing rolls on giant wheels and effectively plugs into pre-made holes in the concrete to lock into position. It’s a long-proven mass-market product, not a shady homebrew solution. But Wang’s deployment of it is just textbook automotive awesomeness.

All this to say, if you don’t think you have room for a workshop, maybe you have room to store a portable lift and the budget to beef up your parking pad! Working outside isn’t necessarily practical for everyone, but this is pretty cool to see.

Got any other creative home-mechanic’ing solutions? Shoot me a note at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.