Life without a car lift.

Top level rally cars are built and serviced on stands, no lifts.

Wood cribs for the car and wood platforms to put the floor jacks on to get projects on the cribs higher in the air than I'd feel comfortable using jack stands.

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Very cool but how safe is this?

Essentially I need to raise my E150 van high enough to get up under and work on the rear end but the wheels have to be suspended so I can pull the axles out to remove the carrier.

I feel the wood cribs are MUCH safer than jack stands. They are more stable because the base that touches the floor is bigger than most jack stands. The car can't "slide" like it can on some jack stands. For many tasks the cribs are used under the wheels (basically raising the floor)so they are creating a wider footprint than jack stands under frame rails. I've worked on cars daily using wood cribs for years. I even use them with wheels under them to allow rolling a car around easily in the shop by making special cribs that lock onto Go-Jacks.

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Y'know, Harbor Freight sells motorcycle stands that are rated to 1000lb... two of those would be great wide-platform jackstands.

In reply to MattW: I did the differential on a Chevy van while working for a dealer.

Jack it up, just the rear as high as you can, place jack stands under framework just in front of the wheels.

Letting the axle hang down gives plenty of room to work, much of it setting down.

MattW wrote: Very cool but how safe is this? Essentially I need to raise my E150 van high enough to get up under and work on the rear end but the wheels have to be suspended so I can pull the axles out to remove the carrier.

Cribbing is used to temporarily support just about anything you can imagine.

Jack/jack stands/ramps for me, would love to have a lift someday but I'm perfectly content just to have a garage right now.

I truly don't think there's anything that can't be done in a reasonably safe manner with a jack and jack stands (and maybe a shop crane) if a little bit of planning and ingenuity are put to use. A lift is just a (tremendous) convenience.

Furious_E wrote: I truly don't think there's anything that can't be done in a reasonably safe manner with a jack and jack stands (and maybe a shop crane) if a little bit of planning and ingenuity are put to use. A lift is just a (tremendous) convenience.

Timing belts on mid-engined V8s. Generally the motor has to come out, and it comes out the bottom. :)

In reply to codrus:

Ah, but cherrypickers can do more than just lift engines, they can lift cars off of engines.

Very cool guys. I appreciate all the ideas.

My working location sucks. Small carport where the cement is super chipped up and it's barely wide enough to fit my car. I don't enjoy getting g the car up in the air and definitely don't like getting underneath it. But it's better than getting ripped off at the local wrench.

Knurled wrote: In reply to codrus: Ah, but cherrypickers can do more than just lift engines, they can lift cars off of engines.

Maybe for your Fiat, but do you want to do that to your Ferrari?

Floor jack, jack stands, and ramps here. I use ramps whenever possible.

I've had three types of working areas: unheated garages, gravel driveway, and a wood platform I built under a fabric garage.

Woody wrote:

Knurled wrote: In reply to codrus: Ah, but cherrypickers can do more than just lift engines, they can lift cars off of engines.

Maybe for your Fiat, but do you want to do that to your Ferrari?

Yeah, I really don't think that's a good option for getting engine+subframe out of a mid-engined car. You'd need both ends of the car at least 3 feet off the ground, so at a minimum it's two cherry pickers, not just one, and the legs are going to get in the way of moving the engine out. I'm sure it can be done, but this is a case where the lift is not just a convenience.

I have a Quickjack and yes it's not really a lift, but it does get the car higher than I can with jackstands. As for what goes under the car, my dad said he always timed his major appliance purchases to when he needed new cardboard for under-car driveway use.

In reply to codrus:

I haven't had the pleasure of doing a timing belt on a Ferrari, but the images I've seen at mat.fi of them restoring/modifying 308s suggest that the engine and trans can come out through the top.

Regardless, I have done an engine R&R in an RX-7 by dropping it out the bottom because I didn't have a cherrypicker. Just floor jack the car high enough to slide the drivetrain out. And there's plenty of people doing engine swaps in 4th-gen F-bodies without lifts...

In reply to codrus:

Haha, no bullE36 M3 I just dropped the engine/trans/k member out the bottom of my Camaro like 4 weeks ago, no lift involved.

Front of car on jack stands and rear wheels still in place, I unbolted the trans mount and dropped the transmission onto a furniture dolly, then picked the front of the car up just barely to get the pair of jack stands out, then set the car down with the k member on a 2nd dolly and unbolted it, picked the car up off the engine and rolled it out the side. Actually went really smoothly.