Novice questions

It is usual to loosen your wheel nuts before jacking up the car. And to fully tighten them after fully lowering the car.

You have a jack that's too small. Easiest workaround is what you've posted above and use a wooden block.

Loosen the wheelnuts slightly with the wheels on the floor.

Get yourself a 'spider' wheelbrace instead of the stubby bar that comes with the car. Much more leverage. There are also telescopic wheelnut wrenches, haven't tried them but that would be a smaller neater solution.

Loosen the nuts with the wheels on the floor, as others have said. Only slacken them off, don't spin them right off or you've suddenly got a much bigger issue.

And when you do end up fixing a puncture on a wet rainy night miles from nowhere and drop all the wheelnuts down a drain, use one nut from each of the other wheels to put the spare on. One missing nut won't kill you, as long as the others are all tight.

It's a good idea to slacken then retighten all the nuts after the cars been to a garage in case the spannermonkeys used their air wrench on 'stun' and you need help to loosen them. (Either a gorilla-like friend, a piece of scaffold tube or take it back and tell them to retorque them properly...)

get a mobile phone and join the rac or similar

Theo how old are you and how long have you been working on cars?

I would say get a block of wood around 6" sq and 2" thick but tricks like this are for the hardened diy pro DON'T even think of trying it.

Get a new Jack with a higher lift, I have seen the jack in Aldi and it should lift okay if placed in the right place under an axle, okay for changing a wheel but wouldn't like to work under a car with it.

As far as the wheels are concerned get a good socket it will be around

17 or 19 mm (Hand brake on and in gear) crack the nuts before you jack the car up, Oh some cars have left handed nuts on the passenger side but this is mostly vans, so just take care.

Spend around a hundred quid on a good 2.5 ton trolley jack

Just remember you only have one life. Never work under a car with just a jack and when jacking up never be tempted to go under it, JACKS CAN SLIP take care.

May be best to buy some ramps and some bricks for the back wheels.

Hope you are just joking here as wheel nuts should be tightened up to around 70 to 80lb with a good torque wrench.

Gaz

It's suprising how much easier nearly all jobs are with adecent jack to get it a decent height in the air e.g.

or halfrauds sell the same jack & occasionally throw the stands in.

Given your email addres you may want to email me direct.

Old enough :) I've done quite a bit of general DIY and am quite practical, but not had a car for very long.

Yup, that was the sort of thing I was thinking of (standard trick for hammering something when you want to spread the pressure so don't get hammer-shaped dents in it). And if there's any sign of instability then let it down.

Ah, I was using the lift point under the engine bay. I didn't think of jacking each chassis side point separately. I wanted to put the front on two stands (for an oil change). But I'm not sure about jacking up one side, putting a stand underneath, then jacking up the other - I'm not convinced it'll be stable enough with one side on a stand and one side being jacked? Or is this commonly done?

(FWIW I have a pair of '2 tonne total' stands but the car only weighs 900kg so it could theoretically be supported entirely on one stand. Not that that's a terribly good idea...)

Mine seems to need a 21mm socket - is that unusual?

Right. What useful extra features does that get you?

...which is why I'm asking these questions rather than just bodging it. Better to do it right than do it badly and have something happen. Better to be paranoid than dead :)

I have some wheel chocks, but I did wonder about ramps. It would make things easier.

Mostly :)

Theo

A good jack will give a lower starting point and higher lift with greater stability and safety.

It is quite OK to jack up one corner at a time, the vehicle will still have three other wheels on the ground.

Pick a level area of concrete to work on. Any other surface or slope puts in all sorts of variables that will make it more difficult/dangerous.

Correctly lubed and tightened wheel nuts will be undoable with the standard wheel wrench. An extendible wheel wrench makes things easier.

21mm is common on many cars particularly Japanese.

Mrcheerful

Thanks. It's these 'obvious when you know how' things that aren't obvious at first sight :)

Theo

Nice to see somebody taking an interest beyond 'enough to pass the test'. Keep it up. You'll be wanting uk.rec.car.modifications next ;-)