linderpat

literally....it's been up on my new (to me) lift bars, and today I was putting it back down. I started with the driver's side - lift a bit to pull out the jack stands and lower. The passenger side slipped off the rear pad when I did this, and the whole car shifted towards me and stopped - just hung there - very precarious. My heart was pounding (I also thought it was going to crush me for a second). The car was about 16" in the air when this happened - plenty high to be seriously damaged if it fell. The whole passenger side bar had rotated about 45 degrees. Even the front pad with the pin was out of the hole in the jack point.
Anyway, called AAA and had them come with a couple of extra floor jacks to get it down before it fell down. Whew - big one avoided!

EDIT - see post 20 below - I was using the wrong set of liftbars for my car

mcholdfast

I've thought about buying a set of liftbars but wondered what prevents them from rotating as you described. I had a similar pucker moment with a floor jack on my Audi S4 on a gravel driveway. I'm glad you were able to get it down with no damage. Smart thinking calling AAA. I would have never thought of that.

Greggles

Was this just human error or a problem with the lift bar?
We've all made mistakes. Glad you were not hurt (or the car).

Daymon66

? not a very good plug for the lift bars. did you by chance take a look at the passenger side prior to starting your take down? dammit that is scary.
glad you were not injured.. take a deep breath, feels good to be alive..

Adam Geist

Ed - I have two '86.5's and use the lift bars outside when the weather permits. I have not yet experienced your situation - but you do have me concerned.
Adam

linderpat

I don't really know how it happened. I'm very **** about this stuff, so now I'm a bit gun shy. Maybe I had the whole thing too high? I lifted in stages, without much trouble, but did have to lift carefully as the pads would tend to migrate away from the jack points the higher it got (requiring me to lower, reposition, and re-lift).
Nevertheless, many have used these bars without incident that I've heard of.

Fabio421

You're not the only person to have this concern. Here is a handy alternative to the Liftbars. It's stocked at Sears. Mike G. in FL told me about this little beauty.

The Craftsman Lift N Secure jack system, a Sears exclusive, is a revolutionary new jack system that incorporates jack stands nested into the floor jack. Simply position the jack under the chassis, raise the vehicle and then remove the jack, leaving the jack stands securely in place. Easy and convenient and safer too you never have to go under the vehicle to put in a jack stand. 2 Ton capacity with lifting range of 5-1/2 inches to 17 inches. A saddle (included) can be used to covert the system into a conventional jack with a lifting range of 6 -1/2 inches to 13 inches. Lift handle folds flat for quick, convenient storage.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00950187000P
http://s7.sears.com/e2/eVideo.jsp?vi...LASec_1384.swf

Adam Geist

Ed - the only thing I can think of is the ground the jack stands were on was not level front to back and/or side to side.

I just lifted my gold '86.5 and it went up and down ok.

Please check the liftbars to each other - they should be identical.
Adam

Hilton

This is one of my big concerns too, but I work hard to make sure its all stable once up, including relieving any lateral loading once the cars up at the right level by lifting slightly to make sure the stands are supporting a vertical load.

Sounds like you were lowering the car in a single movement?

I always do multiple lifts with my bars; up halfway on one side first, then the other side up to the correct height, then first side up too - that way I'm not tilting the pads on the jack points too much in the process, to avoid just this issue.

Having seen Rixster's post about his lift, I'm wondering how thick my garage's concrete slab is.. a two post lift appeals a lot for safety and convenience reasons, and it'd give me somewhere to park a second 928 indoors >

Mike Frye

I wish you had taken some pics so we could see what it looked like. I just put mine up on the liftbars for the first time this weekend. Mine's an '85, so the bars are different. I didn't expect to have to use wood as a spacer for the rear pads, but I did. Now it's about 16-18 inches up and it's very stable, I'm not sure how it would shift during lifting or lowering.

My jack stands have a 'V' in them that the bars sit in and rotate during raising/lowering. Do yours have that or are they flat on top? Maybe ones with flat tops don't work with the round liftbars because they won't 'roll' during raising and lowering? Just a hunch.

linderpat

Adam - I lifted on the garage floor, which appears to be very level (water doesn't run out when it is hosed - I need to sweep it out). Also, the bars are correct. One is a left side and the other right side, plus it's the correct set up for my year (86.5).
Xlot - you are correct about moving the car up and down in stages, and that is what I was planning to do. I wasn't going to lower it all the way down. I never got to that point tho - it happened as I lifted the car slightly on the driver's side, in order to to start lowering it I was going to pull out the driver's side jack stands. Never got to pull out the stands however, as the car shifted immediately towards me as the bar on the passenger side rotated off the rear pad and out of the hole on the front pad point...

linderpat

Mike - my stands have a V too (actually more like a deep "U"). The car was very stable when it was up. I did have RR ties in various places underneath as a fail safe while working on it all week, however, as I was under quite a bit doing odds and ends maintanence.
I thought about taking pictures, but my heart was pumping too hard. Also, I was afraid to breath too hard around it until the triple A guy got there with the extra floor jacks ( altho I did slide the RR ties carefully back under the front area after the shift, just as something to land on in the front if it did fall)

aggravation

That's weird, mine have performed flawlessly every time(many times).
One thing I always do is once I have made the last move to raise the car to full height and level, I go back to the other side and raise it just a touch and reposition the jack stands and then let the car settle back down because there is a bit of preload or tension left in the second to last side raised that you can see release when you go back and take the weight off of it. The jack stands won't have the weight evenly distributed to all four of their legs if you don't do this. It sounds like one of the stands on your passenger side wasn't really centered and stable.

If your floor jack doesn't roll easily during lifting or lowering it could really load up I bet...

Another thought, you don't have any part of the car making contact with the lift bar between the two ends do you?
Also I use 6 ton stands because the smaller ones seemed way too easy to topple...not a wide enough footprint at the bottom of each stand for my taste!

PorKen

Both styles of liftbars have outriggers which limit rotation. I've only ever seen the bars rotate on the jacking side, when I was trying to lower on uneven/broken concrete (don't do this!). I've never seen or heard of bars rotating on the opposite side?

The early, round style 78-86.0 has three contact points, so it's super stable, even though the jack points are small and round. The later, square style can be more compact, because the jack points are flat and larger.

It sounds almost like you are using round style bars on a '86.5, which requires the square style. Using the round style on the square pads would be very scary! There's nothing to stop the rear of the bars from sliding off the pad!

Can you post pics of the stands you were using, and the car's jack pads, please?

Which bars do you have? Did you buy them from me?


left: round, 78-86.0 | right: square, 86.5-95 (also 86.0 ROW)

aggravation

There are some cheap ones on ebay from time to time too...but I wouldn't recommend them!