MBeaty
Well-known member
Just like many others here, I feel the current design of jack stands tends to be quite frustrating in many applications, especially on uni-body vehicles. About a year ago I decided to finally retrofit my jack stands to make them much more user friendly. I started off with the standard harbor freight / import stands that look like the following.
It was always difficult for me to find a good spot to place the car on the stands. Between the ridges at the end of the stand and the concave cut in the middle, the setup on my car was sketchy at best.
Unfortunately I made these about a year ago, so I don't have any construction pictures of them, but I will try to explain as good as I can.
I will start off with a final picture to help you understand the design and construction.
First I took the end of each stand and machined off the un-necessary contours on the face of the stand. I was hoping to be able to stop with this step, but as it turned out, the casting quality on these is quite bad. The thickness of the stands varied from one end to another but quite a bit. This would cause some problems, so I decided to clean up the side of each of the stands as well in order to get it to a uniform thickness.
As you can see in the picture, the shape of the stand top has been cleaned up and changed to easily support a flat topped box that will sit over it. You can see the lip where I stopped machining on them. This was necessary to bring the ends of the stands to a consistent 1 inch thickness in order to allow the box to sit properly on the stands.
Next I made a box out of 3/16 in. cold roll steel strips. I started off with a 1 inch wide strip and did not want to have to "rip" any of them, so all the width dimensions are 1 inch. The box is fully tig welded on the entire perimeter around the top and is welded along the bottom "inside" perimeter, only in the spots where there would not have been clearance issues. When creating the shape, I left a lip of 1/8 inch around the top plate. This lip helps to hold the rubber trip in place and prevents it from drifting off the top.
You can see the welds on the bottom "inside" of the box.
The final step was to cut and glue a rubber strip into the top of the box. I had some quite hard rubber sitting around at home that works quite well and has held up perfectly after a year of use.
The final results are a set of jack stands that can be used with nearly the original contour for a sold read axle, or the boxes can be placed on the top which makes them work great of uni-body vehicles.
It was always difficult for me to find a good spot to place the car on the stands. Between the ridges at the end of the stand and the concave cut in the middle, the setup on my car was sketchy at best.
Unfortunately I made these about a year ago, so I don't have any construction pictures of them, but I will try to explain as good as I can.
I will start off with a final picture to help you understand the design and construction.
First I took the end of each stand and machined off the un-necessary contours on the face of the stand. I was hoping to be able to stop with this step, but as it turned out, the casting quality on these is quite bad. The thickness of the stands varied from one end to another but quite a bit. This would cause some problems, so I decided to clean up the side of each of the stands as well in order to get it to a uniform thickness.
As you can see in the picture, the shape of the stand top has been cleaned up and changed to easily support a flat topped box that will sit over it. You can see the lip where I stopped machining on them. This was necessary to bring the ends of the stands to a consistent 1 inch thickness in order to allow the box to sit properly on the stands.
Next I made a box out of 3/16 in. cold roll steel strips. I started off with a 1 inch wide strip and did not want to have to "rip" any of them, so all the width dimensions are 1 inch. The box is fully tig welded on the entire perimeter around the top and is welded along the bottom "inside" perimeter, only in the spots where there would not have been clearance issues. When creating the shape, I left a lip of 1/8 inch around the top plate. This lip helps to hold the rubber trip in place and prevents it from drifting off the top.
You can see the welds on the bottom "inside" of the box.
The final step was to cut and glue a rubber strip into the top of the box. I had some quite hard rubber sitting around at home that works quite well and has held up perfectly after a year of use.
The final results are a set of jack stands that can be used with nearly the original contour for a sold read axle, or the boxes can be placed on the top which makes them work great of uni-body vehicles.
