[General] How to Jack up your car and put it on Safety Stands

22 years of jacking up cars and working under them over them in them never had one fall off the stands yet , never had a problem jacking from the diff housing at the rear . always position the stands on the rail never the floor pan , sumps are not a good place to jack from replaced afew sumps coz of this . wheel placed under the sill will prevent the car dropping to the ground for sure .
always watch out when placing car on four stands once one end is up and while jacking the other end watch for the jack rolling or the stands shifting under the weight transfer and vice versus when lowering back down .

 

Are slight slopes a no no ?

 

avoid slopes they only good for skiing on , the more level the ground the more stable the car will be less chance of a roll or slip then gravity sux's

 

Its sometimes hard to guage the quality of the base you are jacking up the car on. Old driveway could be thin concrete, new concrete in garage slab might be too thin to carry the weight as well, so all things considered. Maybe slap a few planks to timber under the stand to spread its load.

 

I'm going to kill myself one day. I jack it up with standard holden jack, put cinder bricks under jack points. all set. i do have a car pit... dont know why i dont use it...

 

nice write up mate

 

cheers.......

 

I was going to recommend the same thing, but rather on the jack stands, place a slab of timber on the jack itself.
That way, when your jacking up your car, the force the jack is applying is evenly spread over the surface your jacking on. If you jack just using the jack circle, you run the chance of bending the chassis rail, due to too much force applied over a small area. I slightly bent the chassis rail in my previous ride (VY commo)

 

when i tried putting mine on stands on the hoist locations at the front it started to bend them because the hoist pads are flat and the stands are V shaped. In the first post you can see that the stands have bent the hoist points... stuff that.

I jacked from the K frame and put the stands under the chassis rails, all good.

 

Very useful thanks.

 

gotta swap back to stock springs to pass a defect, ill be using this for help so thanks for the thread! :beer chug:haha

 

great write up. just curious how you would go about putting the front and back on stand at the same time, so the whole cars raised? i can do one, but arent sure when it comes to the other, i keep thinking its gonna push the car forward and tip the stands over.

 

Thanks for the clear and practical information. Sometimes I get lazy and just put the wheel I have taken off under the sill of the vehicle. Putting stands in the correct positions is a far better idea as you suggested.

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Hi. Great thread.

Does anyone have any tips on getting the entire car off the ground? I am a little reluctant to do so without some proper instruction. My initial thoughts are to use ramps on the front and then safety stands for the back. It would also be handy to be able to get the car onto four stands if you have to work on all four wheels etc. however, being aware of the safety issues I thought I would ask the experts.

"E1 Clubby R8 when only an 8 will do!"

 

As for getting all four off the ground metester,
Ive done it with my mate in the vp you see in the pic, had a nice thick slab of concrete in the garage though, pretty much level.
It can go bad heh, as someone above mentioned , while jacking up the oppisite end the other end on the jack stands is prone to shifting,
I learnt the hard way, me mate was jacking up the front after the rear was placed on custom made 100mm x 100mm jack stands I made at work, we chose the thick hooks at the rear to sit them on....
Well the car somehow almost came off one of the 100mm wide x 100mm wide stands, somehow started sliding off it with its 10mm wide hook it only had another 6mm to go to fall off. after being placed in the center (it travelled 40mm while jackin the front end up, and i had to say WOAH WOAH WOAH, and "Check this sh*t out!!"

And he stopped jackin it up and came around the back and was like, "man thats close."
I think its all because we were jacking from all four sides and not directly in the middle of the car , but as i said be careful.
doing it all again, i'd have the handbrake on full, transmission in first gear on manual, or Park on auto.
Jack the front up support on stands either side on the chassis rails, then jack the rear up at the diff slowly and dead centered and place the stands on the hooks myself, cant see any other spot to place them that can take a lot of load but i havent had a commodore very long and dont go under it at all. Take care, and remember to use back up measures like spare wheels on a few blocks of wood or something.

MY old man has been saved by a few spare tyres stacked on top of each other in the past, gave him 1 inch of head room to squeeze out or something but still saved his life. So yeah try that method, two spares stacked on each other , then slid under for a fail safe measure.

I like your car ramps for the front idea, its alot quicker and safer

 

Cheers VP-hero. I am going to make some blocks from sleepers as a safety measure. A couple of things I have learnt from this thread are don't blindly trust your equipment regardless of how good it is and always keep an eye on all points even if they appear to have settled. Now I appreciate why dad would kick my arse as a kid if I ever went near him working under his car!

"E1 Clubby R8 when only an 8 will do!"

 

Np, i was just under it this afternoon until 8:30pm changing out the tail shaft, jacked the diff up and put two supercheap pin stands under the hooks and lowered it back down, diff came all the way to the ground again, i had them on the 3rd hole, haha, nightmare. It didnt even roll forward while jackin her up.
Even with the car on two pin stands i had one side i was hanging my torso out of holding tension with the trolley jack, I miss my car ramps, they are back in W.A , Let me just add that holden needs a bullet for A> having the exhaust running under one of the centre bearing mounts, and B> for having the handbrake cable gear running under the centre bearing mount. What the F*!*K !!!!! cost me an extra hour of fiddling around being careful, damn i miss the r31 skylines already !!!!

 

I would never have my car on 4 stands. Would be fairly easy to come down if jerking the car around try to undo a bastard bolt.

Ramps and stands or nothing. If you can't afford ramps, make some out of some pine sleeper.

 

Haha, very true, although if you had welded say a huge 400+ mm x 400+ mm heavyduty (3mm or more thick sheetmetal) base for the stands along with a large centre pipe stand with diagonal bracings, kinda like mine site flooring grating for a base rimmed with flatbar to stop the flex and 5mm thick handrail pipe with 5mm diagonal flat bar braces x 4 it would be hard for the stand to topple over so easily, but with the supercheap versions and such of car stands , your correct, its risky business and / or an accident waiting to happen. Just thought id note with a larger base its physically harder to topple over, and again , my heavy duty stands are back in W.A , F*!K ---------- F#@K !! --------- F*)K !!!

 

My stands don't sit snug on the chassis rails on the VS, unlike the VY where the chassis rails are not as wide. Don't really feel safe putting the stands U shaped top on a flat surface, feels like it could slip if it was rocked hard enough. Any other suggestions on where to put my stands? I'm going to be changing the diff mount bush and all shocks, and all front end bushes. I've only got two stands so where's the safest place to put them in the front and rear when I'm working on this?