In the car jacks, one of the important factors you need to consider before picking either bottle or trolley jack is the lift range, min and max lift range.
First talking about the minimum height. Measure your car’s ground clearance beforehand. You need to buy a jack that you can easily place under your vehicle. If you got a low-profile car, you can’t install a bottle jack underneath.
Getting into more details, bottle jacks have 8.5 – 11 inches (22 – 28 cm) original height. If your vehicle has 9”+ ground clearance, go for the bottle jack. If the bottle jack you want to buy has an 11” maximum lift range, you’ll need 11”+ ground clearance to fit it under.
Trolley jacks, on the other hand, are shorter compared to bottle jacks. They are used for cars with low ground clearance, 6”+. Because trolley jacks have 5.2” to 5.9” (13 – 15 cm) minimum height.
How high you want to lift your car depends on the jack’s max lift range. The higher you want, pick a jack with a higher max lift range. In that regard, both jacks have almost the same maximum lift range, 21” (54 cm).
Going further into it, you can extend bottle jacks 17 – 21 inches (43 – 54 cm) while trolley jack up to 12” to 21” (30 – 54 cm). This also depends on your vehicle’s ground clearance. If your car has 2 feet ground clearance like a lifted truck, will you go for a jack either trolley or bottle with a 21-inch max lift range? Obviously not.
Bottle jacks with a 23 – 43 inches lift range are also available. But they’re used for engine hoist mostly, not for usual car repair. Besides, you can pick a low-profile bottle jack as well that has a 6 – 11 inch lift range. But trolley jack is better over low-profile bottle jacks.
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