Jacking query and gears

We used to have a car with built in hydraulic jacks (Ford Pilot ?), what a pity things like that are no longer built in.

Every car I've owned over the last 30 years has a diagram in the owner's handbook showing the jacking points, and also places where additional supports can be used.

Where I use the jack, and where I use the axle stand depends on whether I want/need the suspension loaded or unloaded.

Chris

When I moved out of mum's house in 1981 I shared a flat with a guy who was renting the spare room out after splitting up with his g/f. He was into cars too and had a Mini Cooper and my old Marina by now had a tuned engine in it with BV head, twin carbs, LCB etc and went quite nicely. One weekend he went out to work on his Mini engine in the garage. Being a total plonker he jacked it up with a little scissor jack at the front, no front wheels fitted, no axle stands, crawled under and was wrenching away at the back of the engine with his chest directly under the sump.

By sheer chance I decided to do a couple of things on the Marina a bit later so luckily I was right outside the garage when there was a clunk, a yell and when I turned to look all I could see was his legs sticking out, the front bumper apparently resting right on his thighs and the rest of the car near as dammit flat to the ground. In a burst of pure adrenalin I grabbed the front bumper and somehow managed to lift the front of the car off the ground for long enough for him to wriggle out. When I put it back down we saw that as the jack had collapsed sideways its 4 or 5 inch square base had obviously turned to the vertical position and by the grace of Dog had caught the edge of the sump which held that just far enough up to not completely crush him. He unbuttoned his shirt and we could see an exact imprint of all the sump ribs and casting patterns on his chest.

"Phew, that was lucky" he said and then to my utter bewilderment jacked it back up on just the scissor jack again and crawled back under. I don't know if anyone had yet coined the term "Darwin Award" back then but he was sure as hell trying for one.

I'm paranoid as hell about anything heavy enough to crush me. I use axle stands, leave the trolley jack under there too and if I'm removing wheels for any reason I stick those under the sills for good measure with enough wooden packing on them to make up any gap. Triple redundancy maybe buts it's better than the alternatives.

Smith's Jackall? Trouble was it very rarely worked when you needed it. It had a common pump, selector valve, and four rams. IIRC, it was the selector valve that gave the problems.

Could be, I remember the valve was under the bonnet on the nearside at the back of the engine bay (c. 50 years ago) However, 50 plus years on it should be easy enough and cheap enough to have a reliable system. Some motorhomes now have built in auto levelling jacks, you just hit a button on the dash and away it goes, although I don't know if it can actually lift a wheel, or whether it just levels by suspension movement max.

Absolutely. I usually have to use the SD1 jack to raise it a bit to get a trolley jack in, so leave it in place just taking a little weight even after I've got the axle stands in place. It's quite a strong jack, and locates firmly on the bumper mounts.

What many seem to ignore is the car could equally as easily be pushed sideways off a jack so wedging the wheels still on the ground may help very little there. I'd rather make sure it is firmly supported by the axle stands.

especially relevant if the car is on a cambered road.

I remember a Wolseley fitted with it, and you had to remove the front passenger floor to get at the pump and valve.

FX3 cabs had a built in hydraulic jacking system.

Chris

Most of the cars I've had just show the jacking / lifting points needed to change a wheel.

I agree the mk 1 Focus has alternative points shown in the handbook, but neither of our current cars' handbooks have this detail. In fact I can only remember the Focus having designated alternatives. So my point is; once the designated jacking / lifting point is occupied by the lifting / jacking device, where else would the manufacturer like the load taken for working on the car when it is not good practice nor safe to work under a car supported only by a jack ?? (Rhetorical question)

Hence my frame that both lifts the car and can be used to support it too at the correct jacking / lifting points.

^Do you sometimes work on the car with just a jack then, or do you mean where on the car you use the jack ? ;-)

How do you support the car with the suspension loaded, other than wedge shaped ramps (which will create an incorrect geometry if the car is at an angle) unless the other wheels have been raised too ?

With my frame, I can lift the car, put blocks under the wheels with a brake lock on the foot pedal, and let the car down. Voilà, car raised with load on wheels.

I have seen other equipment available that one can drive or push the vehicle onto and then pivot the device to enable the desired height to be accomplished, but they take up a lot of space, and once the car is on them, it still has to be jacked to work on the brakes / suspension, so back to square one.

David

Thinking back I've been paranoid about heavy things since long before the above incident. My maternal grandad was a haulage contractor in Derbyshire and his son, my uncle, drove for him at various times in the 60s and 70s. There was a Foden tipper which used to haul hardcore and tarmac and a Volvo artic for the general stuff. As a nipper of 8 or 10 maybe I used to love going out with Uncle Jed, getting up at some unearthly hour just after dawn, grabbing breakfast and the packed lunch that Gran had made and spending the day lording it up in the cab of the Foden way above the car drivers. The engine was under the cab between the driver and passenger seats and the raised cover would get toasty warm and I'd usually nod off against it at some time during the day after getting up so early.

I distinctly remember more than one occasion of Jed working on something on the tipper in the big garage, hydraulics probably at the back of the cab, directly underneath the raised box bed with nothing but the hydraulics holding that above him and me fretting about what would happen if a pipe burst and several tons of steel and aluminium came down on him at high speed. So I used to go round the garage digging out big blocks and beams of wood and propping everything up as best as a young kid could manage. It would probably not have made a jot of difference if the hydraulics had failed but it made me feel better.

I'm *never* careless about positioning axle stands Dave, too much at stake - and I will very often leave the jack in place as well just as a back-up.

John,

What I did was to drill a couple of holes in the concrete of my hardstanding and every time I use the ramps, I simply drop a 1/2" bolt into each hole, bung a lump of 2"x2" across the bolts and place the ramps against the timber and then drive the car up 'em - chocking both the back wheels after.

Ditto, ditto, ditto. I've seen too many fallen off, and known of a couple of blokes who were killed.