Many years ago, I patronized a mechanic who would let me get under the car with him while he was servicing it. This was a great way for me to do a more thorough inspection of the chassis than I normally could. However, that came to an abrupt end one day when the lift started “inching” downward, little by little.
I jumped out from under the car, but Rudy–my mechanic–didn’t seem to react. He said that he knew the rate at which it would “inch” down, and he also said that the defective valve that needed to be replaced was under the concrete floor of the shop, so he had no plans to replace it.
Rudy actually got to retire a few years later without being crushed by his own lift, but I never again dared to get under it when my car was in his shop.
The newer 4 post lifts (or even 2 post lifts are pretty safe these days. One you get the vehicle up you can lock it in place. Once properly locked it’s not going anywhere.
I don’t fully trust a jack stand. When ever I lower my vehicle on a jack stand - I then use my floor jack to reinforce the jack stand - just in case.
I built solid wooden ramps similar to these with removable ramp sections and alternating grain in the layers of the level section to guard against splitting and used them for ~ 50 years - little chance of fatigue or collapse (unless termites!)
Even heavy wood ramps are no guarantee against a disaster. Not many years ago the wife of a long time friend of mine died when some stacked and nailed 2 x 10 ramps gave way on one side and dropped a 65 Thunderbird on her. Killed her almost instantly.
As for why my friend wasn’t doing the work that is explainable. Car crash which led to 6 rolls left him a paraplegic. Bad deal on both sides of the marital fence.
Yep. That’s why it’s always good to have a backup. I jack it up, put it on stands, shake the hell out of it to make sure it’s solid, then put the jack somewhere it’ll catch whatever would normally fall on me if the stand breaks. And if that fails too, that’s why whenever possible (sometimes it’s not because of access) there’s also a wheel lying under the car as a 3rd backup.
Even that has a non-zero chance of killing me if I’m having a really bad luck day, but it’s impossible to eliminate all risk. You can mitigate a lot of it by approaching situations with “prove it’s safe” rather than “it’s probably safe” or “I have no direct evidence that it’s not safe.”
Whenever I’m underneath a car, I have a cell phone nearby. Should the worst happen, and I survive, I want to be able to call someone for help.
A few years ago, in Connecticut, some guy was attempting a DIY cleaning of his oil burner. He dropped a tool in the combustion chamber. In his attempt to retrieve it, he stuck his arm through the inspection hole (behind that small door ) and his arm got caught. With nobody around to save him, he got desperate and cut his arm off with a saw to free himself. Absolutely horrible.
I’d like to hear from physics or geometry majors on how the angles of the 2x4s could be improved for safety. Yeah I used to have 2x10s nailed together for some height but when I got rich and weak I bought real ramps. Not much of a chance solid wood piled on solid wood will give way. In my travels though in Northern Minnesota, I have seen more than once a car propped on top of a tree stump. I guess people do what they think they have to do using the resources available to them.
Well it was generally a sarc comment but still hard to envision solid pine giving way. Maybe one of you engineer types can explain the force of a tire foot print on a solid block of pine and the compressive force that would be required to shatter it. I understand a trussed ramp but even a tank with smooth tires would be held up on solid pine. I’m not an engineer but have worked a lot in wood and tend to over-build significantly but this does not meet the common sense test.
The service station where my Dad did business didn’t have a lift, but had a grease pit instead. When I was a teenager, we had a small incline Inn our yard. I could pull the car up the incline, put it in reverse, set the parking brake and chock the wheels. There was enough clearance to easily work on the car. Of course, cars sat higher off the ground back then.
I did not see the incident involving my friend’s wife. They live 25 miles away and heard about it a week or so later. The first cop on scene is a family friend who told me. The cop is ex-Desert Storm Green Beret, and current SWAT member. He said it looked like one of the wood ramps split for some reason. Knot, weak grain, or whatever, He was not part of the official investigation but it was ruled an unfortunate accident by the investigators.
My stepfather was replacing the clutch in his 41 Buick. He did not have any money for jacks and stands, he could hardly stay ahead of his bar bill. He used the bumper jack and cinder blocks to elevate the car. Twice it came down on his head, he just ran in the house and taped up the wounds and tried again.
He got the clutch in, it is a good thing the car did not hit him in a vulnerable part of his anatomy.
The car ramp failures are curious to me as well. I figured they were 2x6 boards stacked on top of each other and so under compression against each other. All of them would have to split to fail. Very unlikely to happen. Then it occurred to me that maybe they nailed them together and stood them on their sides. The misguided advantage would be fewer boards required to get 6" or perhaps 8" of lift. In that case, if the nails didn’t hold them together, some of the boards could separate and down comes the car. Interesting mystery…
Probably need something of this sort to get flat stacked wood boards under compression to fail.
The failure of the wood ramp probably had something to do with its design and construction not being the best.
Hardened steel ball bearings are pretty spectacular when he put them under the press. There are very few things that don’t yield to a super duty press, Terminators included-
