Since its spring time and everyone will be workin on their car's here's a reminder why you should always use jack stands. Jack Stands Save Lives!
This happened less than a kilometer from my house,

http://www.fm96.com/channels/newsinf...spx?ID=1226155
Local News (Courtesy of AM980)


St.Thomas Man Crushed by Car in Driveway

AM980 News

5/5/2010

Police in St.Thomas are investigating what appears to be nothing more than a tragic accident.

Officers were called to a home on Chestnut St. around 6PM Tuesday and found a man had been crushed underneath his vehicle.

Neighbours say the man was working underneath his car when it somehow slipped off the jacks and crushed him. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

No other details have been released, including the man's name and age

 

i use jack stands and if the wheels are off, i throw them under the frame rails too. can never be too safe when you're under a 2600lb+ piece of metal.

 

Through bitter experience, I only use jackstands when absolutely necessary. Otherwise I use ramps. After having 2 cars fall on me that were supported by jackstands I learned two things:

1. The human sternum can support an FD

2. Jack stands suck

 

Wow Aaron that is definitely scary!

We had the Air Ambulance helicopter swoop down on my block for a guy who had been pinned under his car after only using his tire jack. Oddly enough (or not) the exact same thing had happened to his father years before! Darwin reveals himself in many ways, I guess.

I always use jack stands and augment them with some 6x6 chunks of wood that hold a pneumatic jack.

 

I always see guys with racecars warming them up on jackstands by running them through the gears and holding them in gear at about 5,000 rpm for at least 5 minutes. I have seen it done for years, but it never fails to scare the bejezuz out of me. I just can't help but wonder what happens if the car falls off the stands. In the best of cases the car is only supported by 3 of the stands. The 4th one is for looks. In some cases the car is only supported on 2 of them and the other 2 stands on the diagonal act as stops for the car rocking back and forth.

I usually warm up the motor bu running it until it comes up to temp, but rely on a pretty agressive loading cycle to warm it up on pace laps. Its not the best way, but I feel a lot safer and I haven't yet wasted a diff.

Eric

 

I managed to dodge getting crushed once.. i was in the garage all alone and if I got pinned no one would have noticed... ever since them I've been extra cautious... It only takes once people..

 

yep i always put the tires that i took off under the car so if the car does slip, it just lands on the rims and not on you. Hell if im only working on the front end, i double jack stand each side, im sure all of use have 2 pairs of jack stands

 

I believe the problem normally lies when people support the whole car only on jack stands (so 4 stands holding up the car). That can move really easily especially if you're banging something under the car or putting alot of force on something under there. My neighbor did that once, and all of our driveways are on an incline, luckily for him he just stepped out of there to grab a wrench or something and down it went seconds after. I only support one end of the car at a time. That or alteast if you're going to do all 4 then atleast 2 have to be on ramps.

 

You could always weld extensions that run perpendicular (flat against the ground) to each of the legs of the stand...or at least I think that'd help improve stability...lol...haven't really tried it myself.

 

^^I think it's often a matter that the car shifts on the small contact of the top of the stand, rather than the stands tipping most times - although extensions might help the stand rolling over if the car does shift on top.

Had a car (my parents) drop when I was changing the tires in the driveway (pretty flat) when I was 15 or 16. That was one of those bumper jacks, which the young'uns won't remember - good riddance to bad rubbish. Happened just as I/ was reaching over and behind to lift off the tire, so had I not jumped like a scared rabbit at the first sign of movement, could have pinched my arm between the tire and fender lip. Now, I throw a tire under, or a jackstand for anything that has a wheel/tire up or off.

The jacks that come with VW's are nearly as useless as those old bumper jacks - instead of the common parallelogram/scissors jack most cars come with, it's like only 1 half of the parallelogram - more like an "L" or "V" that flares wider as you crank - extremely precarious to use on a flat floor, let alone a roadside. My wife called me once with a flat on the Jetta we had at the time, and even though she was stopped on the road at a fairly flat spot, there was no way in the snow and slush I could get the car up on that jack without it sliding out. I ended up using the jack out of our Saturn that I'd gone to rescue her in.

 

wow.

i just never get under it. all my previous cars were SUV's so there was a ton of clearance - but with my 7 -no way. im staying outta there unless i got ramps.

 

Jacking up my GTR last spring (about this time last year) it slipped off the jack, rolled the jack over (bent the **** out of it) and pinned me between the wall and the car.

Luckily I wasn't under the car and aside from bending my exhaust a bit (I wasn't hurt) there was no damage.

I use ramps 99% of the time out of pure lazyness, but they are safer too.

 

I do this too.
Or if I am gonna go under the car and I am not sure of the Extent of the Time to stay under there,I Jack stand it and also Leave the Hydraulic Floor jack on the car,pumped up enough to stay Tight.That way if anything does go wrong the Floor jack is there.

 

I have ramps but I hate using them. They tend to just slide away as I'm trying to drive up them, and the front of the car is too low and always gets the lower valence pushed up or caught, even with the extensions I bought. Right now my car is up on 4 jack stands and has been for a month. I'm very careful when I put my car up like it is, and I know to give it a good shake from various points to make sure it's not going to go anywhere. I have no worries when I'm underneath it. It's very stable, and I feel I would have to give it a pretty hard hit to knock it off.

 

Jack the car up and then place the ramps under the wheels manually. I think I tried once to drive up onto a set of ramps with the RX-7, many years ago. That did not work out well. Good thing it was before painted the car.

For the last month or so the rear end of my car was supported by jack stands using the tow hooks. I modified the jack stand cradle with a set of sides made from square tubing to fully enclose the tow hooks so the car could not fall off. But as soon as the rear subframe was back under the car, the jack stands were replaced by ramps.

 

My front suspension is completely off. Jack stands are really my only choice, plus they allow me more room to move in and out from under the car. I've always preferred jack stands, and if you put them in the right place and make sure the car is stable, you should have nothing to worry about. I've seen pictures of ramps after they've collapsed from the weight.

 

I have a set of ramps that someone built out of 2x4's a long time ago.

even my super duper low vert (about as low as you can make an FC before the tires hit the body) can climb it no problem. same with my GTR even with it's ridiculous front lip.

jacking a car up and then setting it on ramps seems like a pain in the *** to me. I'm far too lazy for that.

 

I'm not lazy at all, and am willing to put in the 20 extra seconds it takes to pump up a jack so that I feel the job is done safely. With a longer set of ramps, driving up onto them would be easy but standard ramps seem to be too steep for any of my vehicles so I have always just done the jack thing.

Of course, I'm looking at a lift now so all this might be moot for me very soon.

 

The link is dead...was it the guy with the S2000 who was changing his dif?

Rhino ramps and home-made extenders when I'm under any of my cars.

 

My ramps are from Canadian Tire and have 20 inch extensions that sit about halfway up the ramp. The car can get on the extensions fine but the front lip catches on the steeper part of the ramp. They are garbage, and cost more than they're worth. I plan to get some race ramps eventually, but with any luck I won't have to have the car up in the air like it is too many more times.

 

Good reminder, will keep some of these stories in mind, never had an issue personally and want to keep it that way. Race ramps all the way