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Is anyone else cramped under their car?


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I have four Mac 3 ton stands. I can get the whole car high enough off the ground to put the tranny in with no big problems. I just have to take one front tire off to make room for the bell housing to fit under the car. I have an MSA body kit on an S30, so makes it a little lower still. Im 5'10" and about 240, so you little guys be happy not to have the extra mass!

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Yeah Im still trying to figure something out, I went to a few hardware stores and the stands I have are about the biggest you can get from the hardware store. But I did buy a new jack that is amazing compared to my old piece of junk I had.

 

But the problem Im having now is my car is so low that I cant put the jack strait in from the front (even though the jack is designed to be low) so I have to go in from in front of the tire and again the car is so low I cant get it under the front cross member in the front (theres about a 1/8 inch plate in the very middle of the crossmember) so I have to jack from the side and then its all unstable till I put the jack stands in.

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Where did you get your jack? I got mine off the Mac truck, it has a nice wide rubber foot and it fits with about two inches under the metal plate your talking about. My problem is that the jack arm hits my front air dam. I think Mac thought of this though and installed a big foam rubber pad on the arm, so no worries.

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I have areos on my car and can't get the jack under it either. I use 2 2X10 10 ft long. I lag bolted them together and bolted them into floor plug inserts to drive up on. This gives me 3 inches off the ground so I can do some stuff without jacking the car at all. When I need more heilght I use 6 to stands.

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Get the really heavy ones, they are fine. Harbor freight hand tools are fine, it's the power tools that get you.

 

The cheap 3 ton and 6 ton sheetmetal ones are junk though. The 12 ton stands really are pretty good jackstands.

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I'm all for a good deal... but I'd never buy harbor freight jackstands. I've had way too many harbor freight tools come apart on me.

 

I usually don't buy HF tools ,but these are rated way past the capacity i need also i had my Jeep on them before at 5000lbs.

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So question is, how high can you guys usually get your car up to? Also is a jack stand larger than about 2 ft really safe? I imagine youd need a pretty large base to keep it stable. My other idea was to just get some thick wood squares to put under each stand, thats probably my best bet. (just need to find a foot thick board...)

 

Derek,

 

I am 6'2" and for my 810 project to get it way up in the air I used 2 cement block per corner and a (2) 2x6 side by side and 2 more 2x6 going the other way nailed together with a 3 Ton jack stand on top for its base. Let me tell you it's solid as a rock. I had to stage it using a floor jack then placing jack stands at the highest point, then putting some 2x6 under the floor jack to get it up slowly higher and higher. I'll measure when I get home but I am sure its over 2 feet high from the rocker panel to the ground.

 

I have learned anytime I use jack stands as soon as I get perfect placement with the jack stands supporting it while the floor jack is still in place after lowered a touch to take some weight off. I shake the crap out of the car going side to side to ensure no rocking movement and if I can, I will keep the floor jack under for an extra safety measure.

 

I will update the thread and post some pics once I get home from work. :)

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I'm all for a good deal... but I'd never buy harbor freight jackstands. I've had way too many harbor freight tools come apart on me.

 

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=34924

 

at some point its just not all that much cheaper to build things that are lower quality, those stands are fine!

Ive had six of the 12 ton jack stands in near constant use for MANY YEARS, trust me! I agree that much of what HF sells is crap, those stands are an exception, go look at them! they are stable, massive and decent designed stands, and yes it helps to have two floor jacks because at the low , first notch setting they are still fairly high from the floor, giving you plenty of access under a corvette or (Z)

 

http://forum.grumpysperformance.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=26

Edited by grumpyvette
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I'm all for a good deal... but I'd never buy harbor freight jackstands. I've had way too many harbor freight tools come apart on me.

 

HF, like all cheap china stuff, you have to be the quality control. They have good stuff and bad. Those jack stands are solid.

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