Use jack stands people!

I had a jack fail catastrophically while changing tires at an autocross.   No warning, just pop and drop.  Luckily I had two lug nuts started and wasn't under it.  I never went without jackstands again, even just for a quick tire change.

I always give the vehicle a few good shoves from both sides before going under it after putting it on stands.  Now that my two boys are working on their cars I am glad that they are following the same rules without needing to be reminded.

Aaron_King said:

I always give the vehicle a few good shoves from both sides before going under it after putting it on stands.  Now that my two boys are working on their cars I am glad that they are following the same rules without needing to be reminded.

I do this. Even when putting the car on the lift. Aggressive shake in as many directions as I can think of. 

Didn't click this topic at first. Just thought it would be a horror.

Carry a jack stand with you for doing quick work while out and about. But what about the added weight? ;-(

I put in a low rise two post lift to alleviate some of the fear, but even then I spend a lot of time figuring out lift points and giving it a shake once its up to test. I've never been able to get comfortable with the minivan up on the lift. The lift points are too far inboard both side to side and front to rear so it's wobbly up on the lift. That means I don't use the lift with it - its goes up on ramps or jack stands. Life's too precious to lose it to something dumb like that.

A friend's husband was killed about a decade ago when the hydraulics on an old-style garage bumper jack failed and crushed him under his race car while he was changing the oil. 

A few scary instances lifting up MINIs are what convinced me to spend the money on a scissor lift.  

A kid I knew in grammar and high  school dropped an old VW Beetle on himself while changing a flat tire. 

The wheel was stuck to the brake drum and he got under the car and we kicking the back of the tire and kicked the jack over. 

16 years old.

I put jack stands and the wheels under the frame rails. 

I help a friend with a dirt track modified. About ten years ago, we had a young guy helping us. I had to  miss a weekend and when I went to the shop the next time, I  noticed a weird dent in the hood. I asked about it and was told it was a jack stand dent. Seems the guy didn't put stands under the car and it fell off the jack. B.W. threw a jack stand at him from the work bench in the  front of a 32 foot trailer.  Kid never came to help again. 

In reply to Olemiss540 :

Same, especially if its a newer car covered in plastic. Quickjacks help make it way easier though.

I get nervous even with the quickjacks. I'll still pull a wheel or two under if I can. Can't always make that work, so I at least give everything a good shaking. I'd much rather the car get damaged if its going to fall, instead of ME and the car getting damaged.

Only time I don't bother with Jack stands is if I'm at the track swapping wheels around, and not putting myself in harms way.

The other thing to watch out for is the ground. My driveway isn't level, and I've had a "close" call or two where I picked up the rear (with the emergency brake), without wheel chocks, and had things start moving. I put close in quotes because I take not having a car fall on me seriously, even though it wasn't actually close to real danger to myself.

A friend of mine dropped his truck on his head in HS auto shop. Parked on a slope, jack, no chocks, no jack stands. Parking brake didn't work and he knocked it out of gear. 

We don't have stories in our family but do have a strong tradition of jack stands and putting wheels underneath a lifted car.

I've been called a safety weenie, but my real impulse is vanity: after the car falls the best I could hope for is everyone saying "I didn't think he was such a dumb*$$". But I'd be dead and unable to argue the point. So best to keep the car up in the air.

Here's a story of me using up one of my nine lives at age 20 -

I had a '69 Chevy Townsman station wagon that I bought for cheap from my grandfather. It's mission for me was to be a tow rig for my Datsun 1200 racecar. The wagon was in decent shape other than the terrible white paint, and the front suspension badly needed to be rebuilt. I also discovered that the rear panhard rod was badly bent; apparently grandpa had slid into a curb or something at some point.

I went to a local wrecking yard and found a full-sized Chevy Impala of the same era (resting on the ground, no wheels on it), gathered a few bumper jacks from nearby cars and jacked it up to crawl under it. I got the nuts off that held the panhard rod to the car, but I couldn't get the bar off. I ended up kicking it with all I had, but it just wouldn't budge. I crawled out from underneath the car and was standing there wondering what I could do to get the bar off when the car suddenly fell off the jacks and crashed to the ground. It that had happened 30 seconds earlier I would have been crushed. Who knows how long it would have been before someone found my corpse!

After getting over the shock, I jacked the car back up and put some wheels underneath it in case it fell off the jacks again. It seems that the car crashing to the ground jarred things loose, because the bar came right off. 

Lesson learned! 

In reply to RacerBoy75 :

Not a lot of second chances in this world. Glad you got one. 

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

Jerry said:

The only time I don't use stands (I admit) is if I'm changing one wheel at a time, and immediately.  I'm lazy and paranoid, so there's a bit of a trade-off.

If all I'm doing is changing wheels I also don't bother with stands.  I'm not putting any part of my body under the car and neither is anyone else.  Anything else, yes.

 

 

My dad thought the same.  Not going under it so no need for jackstands on this tire change.  Then his truck slid off the hydraulic jack, came down and pinched his fingers between the tire and the lip of the fender.  Broke all 4 fingers.  I can still hear him scream.  That was 1992.  

In reply to A 401 CJ :

One of the friends I mentioned that lived through a car fall, back in early '80s, thought " just a tire change, nothing going underneath." And was right. He never put one single part of his body underneath. But something shifted slightly, car slowly fell towards him. He got all but his hand out of the way in time. Fortunately, as it fell, the brake disk went over to the soft dirt, and pushed his hand into the dirt. His hand was not even sore after his mom came home, and was able to jack the car up. Three hours later. 
And her plan had been to go straight to another appointment, but decided she had enough time to come home for lunch! Would have been MUCH longer, otherwise. 
He uses something under it for ANY lift ever since. 
Plan for the worst, hope for the best!

I do two sets of tire swaps for every autocross. Jackstands every time.

I jacked up my rx8 last night.  While I was getting my jacktands, the car rolled off the jack....  

Nothing damaged, but it was a good reminder.

Back when I was a young EMT, we had a patient come in to the ER that looked like he had been beaten by an angry gorilla.

Nope. Just relying on a hi-lift jack to hold his truck up while working on it... The pins in the mechanism failed and the jack got launched out from under the vehicle. Our unfortunate patient stopped the jack's flight into the next dimension by blocking it with his face. He got away with a handful of stitches and a swollen face; no fractures or anything on the CT scan. 

Moral of the story- use stands/cribbing/ramps so your jack doesn't fail and squish you or punch you in the face. 

Here is something I almost learned the hard way.

Asphalt may be a good, stable place to put a jackstand when it's fairly cold, but when it's been baking in the Southern sun for a while, it softens up quite a bit.

A long time ago, I was doing some brake work in the back area of the apartments I lived in, and had the front of the car supported by two jack stands. While I was working on it, I happened to look over at the side I wasn't working on and saw the jack stand had started digging into the asphalt.  It hadn't tipped or anything, and I wasn't under the car, but if I hadn't seen that happening, I *might* have been under the car at some point in time.

I treated asphalt just like dirt after that, and always used some 3/4 plywood under the jack stands. 

Ramps aren't fool-proof either, depending on the design.

Years ago I was working on my VW TDI wagon in my ex's garage.  Oil change and new rear brakes. I used wooden ramps her father had made for her when she bought the house. They are solid and plenty strong enough for the intended use.  However, the one feature they lack over commercial ramps is that "divot" for the tire that keeps the wheels in place on the ramps. 

So... I had the front of the car on the ramps.  I had jacked up the rear of the car and placed it on jack stands.  Completed all of the planned work.   Started to get the car back on the ground by lowering the back of the car off the jack stands.  That's when the project turned very expensive...

If you've done rear brakes on a modern FWD car with rotating piston parking brake, then you're familiar with rotating the piston into the caliper when installing new pads.  Then after you fit new pads, you'll need to operate the parking brake a couple of times before the pads will contact the rotor.  I neglected to do this part before lowering the car off the stands. 

And I didn't think to use chocks. 

And because the ramps don't have any feature to hold the front wheels in place, the car started to roll off the ramps as soon as the weight of the car transfered onto the rear wheels.

I jumped into the car and pulled the parking brake - and of course, the handle went up with zero resistance and nothing happened and the car kept rolling. 

Towards a closed garage door.

With the rear hatch open.

Resulting in a slightly dented hatch, broken lift struts and a crushed garage door made of wood.  So the door got split apart, garage door windows broken. About the only good part was the hatch glass didn't break.

End result was me spending $3300 on two new custom sized, insulated garage doors.  9'W x 8'H (the one I broke) and also the matching 8' x 8' door for the other bay. 

Fortunately, no injuries other than my pride and wallet.   

The insulated doors did make working in the garage more pleasant during the summer as the west facing wood doors would turn into giant radiators when the afternoon sun would start heating them up. 

Ol boy is still alive, but bump reminder

Another scary issue is placing a floor jack on a smooth area of the car's under-floor. If it's greasy, it can be amazingly easy to slide the car sideways.