First Time Using Floor Jack (for tire rotation)

First time using floor jack to rotate tires and am nervous after reading other posts about the jack slipping and puncturing someone's oil pan! Also I am reading differing posts on whether or not to engage parking brake or which gear to put my truck in. I purchased these for the job:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Big-Red-3-Ton-SUV-Trolley-Floor-Jack-T83006/100595886

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Big-Red-3-Ton-SUV-Jack-Stand-T43006/100594521

Planned on using tire chocks that came with my taco unless someone says not to. I also happen to have another pair of standard 3 ton jack stands (max height 17 in.). I can't find a guide/tutorial on how to rotate tires for our tacomas; I know it is one of the most simple things to do once you have done it, but I know it is potentially dangerous and I also don't want to damage my truck in the process. Thank you for any help!

 

Many tire retailers include free rotations with the price of the tires. Look into that first. Its so much easier with a vehicle hoist.

 

There are several choices.

(1) put floor jack under rear differential, jack it up, and support each end of the axle housing with floor jacks. Now move the floor jack to the front, put it under the jack point in the center, and raise. It is safer to put two jack stands under front frame as well, but it is pretty difficult to cause trouble with the rear supported. Now you can remove wheels and rotate pretty easily.

(2) remove the spare. Jack up one corner, remove the wheel and replace with spare. Go to where you want that wheel to go, jack up that corner and swap. Repeat a total of 5 times so that you end up with the spare back off the truck. Only headache is jacking up 5 times.

(3) if you have directional tires so that you can't use the usual RR -> LF -> LR -> RF type of pattern, you can jack up one side of the truck. You want a point about 60% of the way from the back, closer to the front (more weight on front of truck with cab + engine). Then you can do the RR->RF->RR. then repeat for the other side.

This is not a hard job, nor a dangerous job. But it will take a lot longer than a shop with a chassis lift.

I do mine myself, when I do an oil change. 30 minutes or so is far faster than waiting at a shop. And I would never let a shop change my oil, personally. The place where I buy tires offers free rotations, but the couple of times I used them, it burned about 2 hours with a 15 minute drive each way + waiting. I'd rather do it myself and be sure that the lug nuts are torqued correctly so that I have a chance of removing them with the Toyota tire tool, and no chance of a wheel coming off due to forgetfulness when they fail to torque them at all...

 

Ummmm, Wat?

 

There is nothing dangerous about tire rotation, as long as you don't do anything STUPID, like crawling under the truck while it is suspended on unstable jacks.

First step, 1) while the truck is still down on the ground, is loosen ALL of the wheel nuts. Don't remove them, just loosen them a bit, otherwise you will have problems loosening them later, especially the fronts which won't be held in place by the emergency brake.

2) floor jack goes under the rear differential, lift it, put the axle stands under the axle, and let the truck down on the axle stands.

3) Take the floor jack up to the front. You have two choices here;
a) put the jack under the MIDDLE of the truck and lift the whole thing up at once. There is a... lump, under the engine. Not the oil pan!!! If you look at the back of the splash pan (the black sheet metal cover plate), there is a u-shaped cutout at its back in the middle. In that cutout, is the lump I am referring to. Put your jack's cup over that lump and lift by it. Its safe and solid.
b) lift just ONE side of the front up at a time by placing the jack under the truck's frame rail. The frame is pretty high though, so needs to be a pretty big jack to be able to reach it.

I suggest (a) since it is the most stable. (b) has the problem of causing some diagonal force on the jackstands, which could knock the truck off if they are AT ALL unstable. Whatever you do, DO NOT jack by the lower control arm -- they are very unstable jack points since their angle changes as you lift.


4) If your tires are one-direction-only, just swap them straight front-to-back and back-to-front while keeping everything on the same side of the vehicle. It is highly unlikely that you have one-direction tires on a truck. An alternative pattern that I prefer is the fronts move straight back, and the backs move on a diagonal to the opposite side front. This is because the reality of tire wear, is that the two sides will not really wear the same. Roads slope to the right, which means that the vehicle is constantly steering back up to the left. You don't typically feel it because the alignment is normally set to pull slightly to the left to compensate for gravity pulling slightly to the right.

Some vehicle user manuals will specify just the front-to-back swap. They do this because it is easier than trying to explain the different between various types of tires to people who can barely understand what a tire even is.

5) Once all wheels are in their new location, tighten them down moderately while still in the air, then let the front down, then jack the rear diff, remove the axle stands, and let the rear down.

6) tighten the wheels down to proper torque as specified in user or service manual. You typically take THREE rounds per wheel, first to 50% of the spec torque, second to 100% of spec torque, and third to make sure, again to 100% of spec torque. You follow tightening order as follows; on a vehicle with 6 lugs numbered 1 through 6, 1 --> 3 --> 5 --> 2 --> 4 --> 6. On vehicle with 5 lugs, 1 --> 4 --> 2 --> 5 --> 3.

*** It is typically a good idea to use a decent torque wrench. If you have a decent feel for tightening things, you can get away with just going by feel, but it is still better to torque them properly.

 

Excellent and thank you very much!
I updated my sig to show my truck model/year. My truck is a 2014 with only 8000 miles on it but I am going to be driving it more frequently now. I have the original tires (Dunlop AT20 Grand Trek p245/75r16. The owner's manual does suggest front to back rotation but after reading tgear.shead's post it does indeed appear that these tires are NOT unidirectional based on the tread pattern and therefore I will indeed rotate them cross pattern as there are already signs of feathering on the outside of the front tires. I have already purchased a decent torque wrench as well (Craftsman 25-250 ft.lb.) and will be torquing lugs as specified to approx. 83 ft.lbs.
I will be changing the oil as well and will be doing both oil change/tire rotation at the same time from now on. Bought bulk order of Nissan oil filters as suggested by threads here at TacomaWorld and got a jug of Mobil1 0w-20. And for convenience's sake I opted for a quick change oil drain valve-- almost got the fumoto but instead went with No Spill drain valve with the compression fitting.
Having fun with my truck and looking forward to working on it. Thank you all again! And thanks tgear.shead for the detailed explanation!

P.S. I am going to put the truck in PARK and engage the parking brake when jacking/tire rotation; unless told otherwise.

 

FYI: The 2.7 requires more than one "Jug". I think something like 6 quarts in total.

 

Yes indeed. I did get a jug +1 quart. Huge debate here over whether oil capacity is 5qts-5.5-or 6.1qts. Figured I would go in the middle and do 5.5qts and see how the dipstick reads after that.

 

Contrary to some people's assumptions regarding the oil capacity of an engine, it doesn't have a razor edge where overfilling it will suddenly cause very bad things to happen, it truly takes a LOT of excess oil to really overfill an engine to the point where it froths up and causes problems.

The simplest part of the "debate" involves bad readings. These engines are really hard to read using the dipstick. The proper time to read a dipstick is right after the engine has been running, before it has had the chance to drip back down to the bottom and raise the level. The problem with this, is that when the engine is running, the oil splashes all over the dipstick and messes up the reading for the first pull. With most cars, you pull the dipstick out, wipe it off, back in, pull, and read. With Tacoma, the first pull slathers oil all over the tube, which contaminates subsequent readings, which means that there is no way to get a perfect reading from it.

EVERYTHING manufactured includes a range of acceptable conditions, that not only includes the range that the machine is OK within, but also a safety margin well beyond that to compensate for errors, carelessness, and stupidity.

The other part of the confusion with regards to the engine's oil capacity are related to varying units of measurement, and varying options (replace filter, don't replace filter).

WITH filter replacement, the capacity is;
6.1 US quarts, 5.1 IMPERIAL quarts, 5.8 liters.

WithOUT filter replacement (though I can't imagine why you would change the oil without the filter...), the capacity is;
5.4 US quarts, 4.5 IMPERIAL quarts, 5.1 liters.

I'm not even sure why they would include imperial quarts, since there is not a single oil jug showing that unit made anywhere, since Canada turned metric in the 1970's.

So my way of figuring it, is you just figure "6" and be done with it. If you're using quarts, you will be just a hair below the "max" line, if you're using liters, you will be just a hair above. Either way, you are WAY above the "low" line, and without question, within tolerance.

The tolerance includes compensation for excessive stupidity, and *probably* goes from about 2 quarts/liters below the "low" line, to the same amount above the "max" line. I wouldn't recommend testing how far the tolerance really is (since the only way you would know is by blowing up your engine), but I can guarantee that it is no less than 1 qt beyond the range in both directions.