Jacking the car so that 2 tyres are off the ground then let it down onto the stands?

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Jacking the car so that 2 tyres are off the ground then let it down onto the stands?

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mdooher

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#2700822 2-May-2021 16:48

Technofreak:

frankv:

... and, implicitly, DON'T jack up one side and put jackstands under it, then the other.

Why not? I do the front or rear this way all the time, quite safely. It may not work with all cars but it sure works for mine. Unless you're talking about putting jack stands front and rear on one side only then I'd tend to agree. If you need to jack the whole car do both sides of the front or rear first then the other end.

If you need to lift each side quite a bit, do it in stages, a bit each side until you get to where you need to be.

Most cars have jacking points for when you need to change a flat tyre. This is usually a good place to position the jack stands. Otherwise look in the owners manual for jacking positions. Usually the sub frame where the suspension attaches is a good place to place the trolley jack. If necessary use a block of wood to spread the load.

because the car will try to slip off the stand or try to tip the jack stand over. the horizontal distance between the jack points must change as the car lifts. if you are lucky and using a trolley jack it moves to make up for it, but if the friction on the top of the jack stand is less than the friction of your trolley jack stuck on the smallest of stones.....

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#2700865 2-May-2021 20:05

lxsw20:
Puts a lot of stress on the chassis doing it that way. I usually just jack on the subframe. (Which the Bora does have)

Unless I'm missing the point there's no nore stress than if you were jacking one wheel to change a tyre.

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#2700868 2-May-2021 20:16

mdooher:

because the car will try to slip off the stand or try to tip the jack stand over. the horizontal distance between the jack points must change as the car lifts. if you are lucky and using a trolley jack it moves to make up for it, but if the friction on the top of the jack stand is less than the friction of your trolley jack stuck on the smallest of stones.....

Never had that problem that I can recall. It also probably depends at what angle you position the trolley jack. I've used the trolley jack on a good clean surface so that the trolley jack keeps on centring itself as it lifts, so it is not pulling the vehicle to one side or fore/aft.

However what ever way you do it you need to be careful. After I have the stand(s) in place I usually leave the trolley jack in position just snugged up against the chassis sub frame as a back up to the stand(s).

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#2700883 2-May-2021 21:59

If you do not need to remove the wheels themselves, use ramps instead.

Fred99

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#2700935 3-May-2021 09:52

When I was a small child, our family car was an (already old) Austin 16 which had hydraulic jacks operated by a pump, theory being that if you had a flat tyre, you'd flick a lever (IIRC) under the bonnet and the car would slowly rise off the ground like magic - no effort required. This worked very well when not needed, I'd beg him to demonstrate the system in action. However it failed to operate when we actually had a flat tyre. I have vague recollection of being stuck on the side of the then unsealed Kaimai road while my father stood in the rain trying to flag down another motorist - to borrow a jack. The automatic jacking system never worked again.

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#2701039 3-May-2021 10:49

My 1st car was a 1946 Austin 16. The jacks were bolted to the beam axles with a hand pump under the floor in the passenger footwell. There was a selector switch for front, back or all. If the was someone else driving you could have fun jacking the back wheels off the ground at traffic lights. The system also stopped working before it was ever needed to change a wheel.

The brakes on the other hand were purely mechanical rods, balance beams and wedge and roller shoe actuators.

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#2701115 3-May-2021 13:06

I can't remember the details as I was only about 3 or 4 when we had that car, but thought the pump on the one we had was electric or driven off the engine.

I do remember that it had some serious rust in the floor pan in the back, no seat belts in those days. I'd grab some gravel from the roadside, get on the floor, lift the carpet and drop the stones out the rust holes when we were on the highway. If I'd been savvy at that age, I should have asked the local windscreen replacement shop to pay me commission to supplement my threepence weekly income.

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Bung

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#2701204 3-May-2021 14:05

The 16 ran through to 1949 and the later Jackall systems were apparently the same as the London Taxis so the pump was moved to under the bonnet. I don't know if the Taxi system had an electric pump but Rolls & Austin Princesses did.

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#2701223 3-May-2021 14:44

One thing I'm sure of - we didn't have a luxury version of any car, but I'm pretty sure that the old Austin 16 was considered (reflecting on cars in his dotage) by him to be one of the more dependable old clunkers he owned - despite having to buy a jack.

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#2701333 3-May-2021 18:27

The 16 wouldn't have been a cheap car. Mine had very cracked leather seats. Both front seats had 2 folding arm rests. Many post war cars used a lot of the aluminium stockpile collected during the war. "Pots & pans for Victory" never ended up as aircraft. Mine had an alloy valve gear cover and aluminium bodied mufflers that made it quieter than later Austins.

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#2701395 3-May-2021 19:34

When did you own it?

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#2701435 3-May-2021 20:55

1970, sadly it was introduced to the front of a Falcon taxi so I didn't have it for that long. I've still got the rear number plate :-)

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#2701499 4-May-2021 08:20

That's probably a decade after the one my parents had. I'm pretty sure they still owned it when the "new" silver on black number plates came out, the old yellow and black plates ended up on the garage wall. Replaced with a 1954 Vauxhall Velox - with with slide down windows that slid down by themselves when it went over bumps in the road. Two tone green and cream - very modern to have a (>10yo) car that wasn't black.

That Velox was sold to a couple of young guys who owned it for less than a day, both were killed when they lost control and hit a lamppost - right outside the local police station. There was an investigation - wasn't found to be a fault with the car.

Those old cars really weren't very safe.

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#2701523 4-May-2021 09:05

Fred99:

That's probably a decade after the one my parents had. I'm pretty sure they still owned it when the "new" silver on black number plates came out, the old yellow and black plates ended up on the garage wall. Replaced with a 1954 Vauxhall Velox - with with slide down windows that slid down by themselves when it went over bumps in the road. Two tone green and cream - very modern to have a (>10yo) car that wasn't black.

That Velox was sold to a couple of young guys who owned it for less than a day, both were killed when they lost control and hit a lamppost - right outside the local police station. There was an investigation - wasn't found to be a fault with the car.

Those old cars really weren't very safe.

Yes and no.

That lamp post didn't jump out in front of the car. You parents manged to survive while owning it. By the standards of the day that car would have been more powerful than the average car. Just like today the cause of that accident would have most likely been a mixture of inexperience, youthful exuberance and stupidity. Cars today do a better job of protecting those affected by these afore mentioned causes.

The fitting of seat belts probably made the biggest difference. I remember my parents buying a brand new 1962 Vauxhall Velox PAX. They had seat belts fitted to it from new. However only to the front seats. Seat belts were not a common sight and were not compulsory in those days.

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Fred99

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#2701557 4-May-2021 09:55

There's also "risk compensation".

The cause of that accident was attributed to booze. Fortunately they didn't kill someone else. Still tragic though, having one or three for the road was pretty routine back then.

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