Abstract

Car jacks are necessary when changing a flat tire or raising any part of the car. Unfortunately, available screw and hydraulic jacks are manually operated thus requiring more physical effort on the part of the user, and creating difficulties for people especially at night when there is no source of illumination. Although there are several works on automated car jack, this work incorporates something new by displaying the height of the jack at any instant during use, with the help of an LCD. The design consists of the transmitter and the receiver unit. The receiver unit is powered by the internal car battery (12V) or through the 12V cigarette light adaptor in the car. The transmitter unit uses 9V DC battery. The receiver unit consists of a DC motor, gear system and a screw jack. The gear system was integrated into a DC motor to reduce the speed of rotation because the system requires a high torque but low speed during operation. A display unit was incorporated in the transmitter unit to show the current height of the jack. A light source was added to the jack to provide lighting during use at night. After construction, it was used on different vehicle models and it worked satisfactorily as it was able to raise and lower loads of up to two tons (2tons). The jack also provided light through the LED’s that was attached to the receiver unit and also the height of the jack was displayed during the raising and lowering process.