Can I jack my 93 Mustang under the front control arm?

I always jacked up the fronts wheels on my '89 under where you say. Never had any problem. Better than putting more dents in the thin sheet metal where the book says to put the jack. The rear is easy with the big rear axle shafts..

Fred

Makes sense to me...

... but then again a lot of stupid things make sense to me!

Depends on how you do it. If you use a floor jack and place the pad under the rim of the arm, you'll likely bend it. But if you place under the spring perch, it will be fine.

Nope. That's the only way Ford recommends to do it, if you want the suspension loaded. Like .boB said, make sure the jack is under the spring perch.

The other recommended front jacking points (per a PDF I got here about 3 years ago) are the center of the K member under the engine and on the subframe rearward of the wheel well. Both of those are for if you want to lift with the suspension unloaded.

Repeat!!!!

.,.. if you place under the spring perch, it will be fine.

It's all in concentrated point loading on "thin" sheetmetal, and even an A-Arm rim is thin in comparison to a frame rail. The spring perch is flat and you spread the load out some, but the "rim" of the jack pad could still muss it up cosmetically.

You have to be careful about the pad being unstable and the car falling off, but you can always make a pad for the floor jack out of wood, folded carpeting or cut-up tire treads to spread the loads - make a slot for the pinchweld to sit in, and put the load across many square inches of the flat unibody "frame elements". Then you can pick it up at the pinchweld jacking spot with no body damage.

If you want to do a bit of welding & fab work, you could make a replacement floor jack load pad out of a square of 1/2" steel plate and a chunk of round rod to fit the jack arm hole, with a couple of rectangular rubber dock bumpers bolted on facing up. Nice and stable, and a convenient slot between the bumpers...

Sometimes the best tools are the ones you make yourself. ;-)

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