A general question about car jacks and jack stands?

CHRISTOPHER SA

MEMBER
1993 BMW 320I
2.0L
6 CYL
2WD
MANUAL
117,000 MILES

I have always wondered why the ends of hydraulic car jacks and mechanical jack stands had such weird shapes for the car to rest on.

The jack stand shown has an end shape that is just about standard across all jack stands and I have never been able to find a spot on the chassis where I was comfortable in placing one of these. The hydraulic jack end/cup is also just about standard on inexpensive hydraulic jacks. This one is a bit more logical as on a BMW E36 it comes with jack placers made out of plastic that push in to holes underneath the jacking points on the side of the car. But even so, they are still not secure, usually with the car resting on just one or two of the protruding 'tabs' on the edge of the cup, and a bit precarious to use.

Can you shed some light on this?

One would have thought that the manufacturers would have made provision for proper meeting points for hydraulic jack and jack stand ends. But this seems to never have been treated seriously by most of the car manufacturers (some very high-end cars have hydraulic jacks that come down from inside the chassis).

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3 Replies

STEVE W.

MECHANIC
12,968 POSTS

The top saddles for both were designed long ago for use when cars had real frames and solid axles. At that time, you could put the jack under a spring perch and lift the car, then slip the jack stand into place under the axle tube or the frame rail and support the vehicle. As times have changed to now where there are no real full framed cars, and many are lifted using the pinch welds or small jack points you have to get a bit creative as to where you can lift the vehicle and the same for locating jack stands. Many will show the jack or lift locations in the owner's manual or service information. In my case I tend to use simple processes. Namely if the vehicle has a suspension, it has to have mounting points for that suspension. Say where an A arm or trailing arm is attached to a subframe. As those parts are designed to support the vehicle using the suspension itself, they should also be capable of lifting and supporting it with a jack and stands.
Now on newer jack stands you will usually find a notch in the top saddle, the idea of that notch is that you can use it where the pinch welds are located, the problem there is that most of them are not ground very well and instead of supporting a wider area they crush the pinch welds due to a small surface area. In those cases I avoid the pinch welds if possible or if I have no choice I grab a flat saddle floor jack, not one with a cup like the one shown but a wide flat rubber surface, I have also added a rubber pad to the older jacks as well, and for that a very easy item to use are hockey pucks.
Keep in mind though that for the most part, companies don't intend on having the average person working on their vehicles with a floor jack and stands, they design them so they can be put on a lift instead.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/jack-up-and-lift-your-car-safely

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Friday, October 7th, 2022 AT 7:17 AM

CHRISTOPHER SA

MEMBER
206 POSTS

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the fast response. That's a very interesting answer as I hadn't thought about the saddles being designed so long ago for 'real' cars! I would have thought that jack manufacturers would have seen a market for old and new saddle designs. It seems that the designs have never been updated to keep up with the times.

Any manufacturer would make a mint if they modernized their designs of the saddle to take into account the cars of today. But that would then bring up the point - well which design would you go for? As there are many different designs of cars, though most cars are now unibodies.

It's a shame that manufacturers have not been more respectful of the customer and included proper jacking points (apart from those for the manufacturers' own jacks) that accept the current crop of saddles or work with jack manufacturers and come up with a standard solution for all cars that make jacking them up easy and safer than they are today regardless of whether customers are encouraged or discouraged to work on their cars.

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Friday, October 7th, 2022 AT 7:57 AM

STEVE W.