jack stands on altima

Question from a guy just learning to work on his own car....

To jack up my altima I use the standard scissor type jack that came with the car. Now if I want to get under there to do some work what is the best place to put the jackstands. I would assume the jackstands should go under the jacking locations with the two notches right behind the front wheels.

But this is the location used to actually jack up the car. So if I use the jacking location to put the jack....where do the jackstands go?

Could putting the stands under another point along the frame other than the jacking location damage the frame?

Thanks alot

Reply to
Mash
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You are completely right in your thought process.

Here's what I do:

On the front, I use a hydraulic jack to jack up the car. Please bear this in mind with my description; I know what it is when I see it, but I find it difficult to describe by words, so here goes;

The hydraulic jack is located to the front suspension mount point where the lower control arm connects to the frame/body from a large bolt. I jack up the car there then place the jack stands under the 2 notches as you described earlier. Of course the stands don't get placed until the car gets high enough. The idea is that I find points along the suspension that are fixed. Given that the suspension is designed to handle the stress/load of the weight of the car during cornering, it can more than handle the load of jacking the car up off of the floor.

On the back I do the same thing.

On my previous Maxima and present Sentra, I have a beam to deal with in the rear. In that case I jack up the middle of the beam and that lifts up both rear wheels. The rear end is usually much lighter than the front for FWD vehicles

Always use jackstands and know where to put them.

Hope this helps

CD

Reply to
codifus

CD, Thanks. So to be safe I really need a hydraulic jack that I could put under the front suspension mount point and not the cheap little scissor type that came with the car. I guess that jack should be used for changing tires only. That helps alot. Thanks

Reply to
Mash

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