travman

So I rotated the tires for the first time last night on my 10' (in an x pattern) and discovered that the front center jack point is too far in to reach (even with a low profile HF jack). Instead, I jacked the car up by the rear jack point, put in my jackstands, then proceeded to the front and jacked up one side of the time and swapped wheels. When I jacked up the front sides, the rear side lifted off of the jackstands a little bit, so i dont plan on using this method again. Is jacking the car up like this bad for the chassis?

300whpej

happens to me on almost all cars. the likelyhood that 3 jack stands wont support your car is unlikely to say the least. there should be enough of a gap to turn the jackstand 90* and have it fully supporting that corner of the car. instead of the jack stand sitting parallel to the chassis it will be perpendicular (if that makes any sense).

macbuddy

I think you'll be alright, mrFroge has been practicing this method for nearly 5 years. When we swap out the tires, we use the front jacking point to raise one entire side of the car. We are able to change both tires at the same time. We then go to the other side, and do the same. We only have to use the jack twice to change all four tires!
Here is mrFroge getting ready to change over to his racing rubber...

macbuddy

travman, I rotated the tires yesterday. I dunno if you can see in this picture, but both tires were off the ground. BTW, we actually use the frame as the jack point when using floor jacks.

travman

Thanks for the replies. I was just a little worried since I had the entire rear of the car on jack stands, it was kind of lifted awkwardly when I jacked it up using the front left/right jack seam welds. But yes, the only difference was that instead of the suspension taking part of the load on the opposite rear side, the jackstand\frame was supporting it in the rear.