O/T? Could have died today....

My Nephew bougth his first car, a '79 Olds Cutl***. The motor needed pulled. So his dad, he and I planed to pull it today. Got it ready to pull out on the rock drive way. Had it up on jack stand, Dylan (nephew) and I we under it taking out the ****** bolts. They were a ***** do we decided to try from above. Bryan (his dad) started wrenching on them, few moments later BAM, that freaking car fell off the stands.

We joked about it, but man, on the ride home, **** that was scary as hell! I imagine, I'm going to have a hard time sleeping tonight.....

 

Glad to hear no one was hurt...
I have pulled dead people out from under cars when i was on fire and rescue.
Never never use just two stands under a car. Always block the wheels,
When extra jack stands arent available, Changing a flat tire or whatever..
take a tire and throw it under the frame.

 

Jack stands are designed to be used on flat hard floor. I take and set them on Pieces of 3/4" plywood that is cut 2" to 3" larger than the bases of the jackstands when ever I am using them on anything other than Cement.
Glad to hear nobody was not hurt.

Dawg

 

Thats my biggest fear when it comes to working on these old cars.

I bought the best jackstands I could, I always leave the jack underneath too, if for some reason a jackstand breaks, and if I have the wheels off, I always lay them under the frame.

Maybe I'm paranoid?

 

Glad your ok.. I had my close call last year.. got pinned under the truck.... glad my wife was home, and knew how to use a floor jack... Scary time,, I was black, and purple for weeks!!! I thank the Good Lord every day... A four post lift is on my list to Santa... Real cheap.. compared to a life... be safe,,and say your prayers..Sparky

 

Ya, thinking about it we should have blocked the wheels up. I will never put myself or anyone I know in a suituation like that again.

 

we had a teen killed many years ago using 4 bumper jacks to hold up a car to change a ****** .I don't know how he even managed to jack it up without it falling the car came down on his head and it was his kid sister who found him when he didn't come in for lunch.this was a real wakeup call for me because I had just been cought under a car on 1 jack by my stepdad and realy got an *** chewing from him about safty while working under cars

 

I lost a good friend earlier this year when a car fell on him in a salvage yard.

This happens far too often for any of us to think "it won't happen to me". Ya gotta be careful.

JH

 

Having to use jack stands on gravel or dirt, I modify them for extra support. Simple trick just weld a flat plate to the base. I use 1/8" steel plate about 1" bigger square than the jack stand legs. This distributes the weight over a larger area and keeps the jack stand legs from sinking in. Even then, once the car is up on the jacks, push it as hard as you can to make sure it won't roll off the jacks. If you consider that most jack stands have about 2 sq.in. of metal in contact with the ground and you have 1000 lbs on each thats 500 lb/sq.in. Now put a 10x10 plate under that stand and you are displacing 10 lb/sq.in.

 

I have some drive on metal stands that i never drive a car up on but they work great to slide under the tire when working under the car.

 

I have always wondered about thoses but never been brave enought to try them

 

I wish i had 2 more. Their very strong to support a car. I remember when my grandfather had these and actually would drive a full size 70's Buick on them for oil changes it the driveway. If they hold up to that punishment i figured their safe for jack stands too.

 

They seem to be plenty strong, and they are good to have on hand to slide under the frame on each side as a backup when you have the car on jackstands.

 

Wow. You got lucky, man. I always try and use 4 jack stands. Takes the guess work out of it. Always on a solid level surface though.

 

I use jack stands for the very same purpose in the same way! Too many freaky experiences(one) with those damn things. In fact, if the ramp part isn't structural, I might just cut them off and use them like jack stands under the tires.

 

Use the car ramps. Been doin this for years..safe as hell...there's no way the car's gonna come off of em if you use 4....

 

I had my 66 Plymouth on ramps pulling the trans and had the rear wheels blocked , pulled the driveshaft and trans but the torque converter was stuck in the crank. I was pulling really hard to get it out and rolled the car over my wheel blocks and when the car came down a bolt hit my gl***es and popped out the lens and put a big gash under my eye and I was stuck under the thing with noone around, I managed to push up on the car hard enough to get out but I was damn lucky I didn't get killed. Dumb stuff but you have to be careful.

 

I had a 1 ton truck fall on me when I was sixteen on my family farm. Uneven ground ,and stupidity will kill ya. I could not get a stand to stay under the truck so I used a solid concrete block , not a hollow cinder block. Well I am working under the frontend of the truck when I heard a loud crack , the concrete block basicly exploded, I rolled out just in time to get my shoulder pinned between the mud and the front rotor. Lucky the mud was soft as it was because it could have been worse ,just bruised and scared.

 

Those ramps,and my stupidity got me. I was going to change the trans. No forward gears,but I did have a reverse. I backed the truck up the ramps,just behind the front wheels. The truck was on the ramps in front,and I blocked the... rear of the rear tires. It was tilted back,and I thought it wouldn't roll forward right?? MY DUMMY.. I went under to pull the driveshaft..... The truck losing its block of the driveshaft,ROLLED FORWARD off the ramps!!! Fortunatly the wheels were atill on it,and I "only" got pinned between the ground,and the rear toqure arms('71) a space of about 10" Squeezing the air out of me and hurt like hell(hip bones,and ground). Thank you wife,for knowing how to use a floor jack!!!! BLOCK ALL 4 WHEELS!!!!! Like I say a lift is on my wish list. BE safeSparky

 

Glad no body got hurt does make ya think. I like the ramps myself but when working under the vehicle I put one facing forward and one back and still block the other wheels. You don't want anything rolling off those ramps either.

 

I've posted this several times, but it looks like it can't be posted too much: Always, always always put a spare tire (with wheel) under the car's frame rail when you've got it in the air. I took the time to do it once with my '54 Buick, and it saved my life. The car was still on all four tires, but I needed to get to the inline electric fuel pump for a roadside repair. I pumped the car up with a portable floor jack, slid the tire below the frame rail, slid under it and started working. The tires weren't even off the ground--the suspension was just extended. After about ten minutes, I heard air rapidly escaping the spare tire--the jack slowly bled down, came to rest on the tire, then squeezed the tire until air was getting out around the bead. The jack was so slow, I never noticed it over the course of ten minutes.

My chest will not fit between the frame and the ground. If I hadn't had that tire there, I'd have been trapped and squeezed, and not able to breath. The worst part is, I was making the fix in a parking lot, behind a big screen of trees, on a Friday evening on the way home. They wouldn't have found my body until Monday morning, because they'd have NEVER looked for me where I parked the car.

I also know a guy who was letting a friend use his shop. The friend was putting headers on a BBC El Camino drag car. The car was on stands, and he had the jack under it, too. But he needed a couple extra inches of clearance betweem the ground and the frame to get the headers up in place. The car came down with the subframe across his chest. Busted ribs, punctured lung, other internal damage. Luckily, the shop owner was in the machine room, and not in the house, and heard the car fall. In as much time as it took to turn off his machine and run back to the work area, the guy under the car was out cold and not moving. Or breathing, because the car was one him.

Finally, to put a very fine point on it--a guy I worked with had a highschool friend working under a truck, on jack stands on a dirt floor. The stands slowly sunk into the ground, and he realized he was trapped and couldn't do anything about it. It slowly squeezed the life out of him, and they found him under it.

Think you can get your hand on a floor jack and lift a car off you? No. If it hits you fast, you'll p*** out pretty quickly. If it slowly settles on you, you'll have the nice, long, drawn out panic as your breath comes shallower and shallower. You want a wake up call? Each time you go under a car, think about how your family or the authorities will find your body.


Even in the garage, I always throw a tire under the car when you put it in the air for anything. Even if you've got four jack stands under it, and the floor jack. A) You usually have the tires off anyway, so you're going to have to stash them someplace, might as well be under the car, right? B) so you might have to work around it. Beats the alternative.
-Brad