Mechanics: buying a tool vs improvising, part 1

Self-tutoring about mechanics: the tutor mentions an improvisation.

I don’t have a proper floor jack, just a tire-changing one that doesn’t comfortably lift the car high enough to get the jack stands underneath. The clear idea would be to buy a proper floor jack, which one can get very reasonably.

The problem is that a floor jack is heavy and takes up a lot of space: one needs a place to put it. While it would be very nice to have, a floor jack without a place to stay will be more trouble than the advantage it brings.

Such can be the same with other tools, as well. Even if a tool is reasonable enough to acquire, and very useful, it may not have storage space available.

Often I use workarounds instead of the precise tool for the job. In this case, needing to raise the vehicle high enough to get jack stands under it, I made a couple of lifters. Each is a staggered stack of 2x4s, first one, then two, then three, with the next level starting about fourteen inches along the previous one. Against the end, I glued a stop block, which reaches about five inches above the top level, to keep the vehicle from rolling off the end.

While I don’t recommend this solution, it did work for me. I got someone else to drive the vehicle onto the lifters so I could guide them when to stop: even though glued pretty tight, the stop blocks started to left go. However, they worked for the occasion.

After the vehicle was stopped with the e-brake on, we blocked it from rolling, using blocks of wood against one of the tires still on the ground. Then, it was easy to place jack stands underneath it.