wooden car stand (cribbing) project

Yes.. my jackstands can do 24" and they have a smaller footprint than these wooden ones you're designing do. Not to mention they're most likely no heavier, and much stronger.


And so what happens when I need to do work on one brake? I have to lift the entire car up to take all the wheels off to set the frame on these stands? That sounds like a ton of extra work, just for there to be less clearance in the end..

 

One advantage the orig. cribbing has is everything is laying flat. With most of these boards standing up on their sides all in the same direction there isn't much keeping your new design from toppling over like dominoes.

 

This is what would worry me.


Probably good this one starts like this:
The author of this thread is not responsible if you injure yourself or others in any way. Use good judgement and sound engineering principles when constructing your wheel stands. The following thread is for reference only. By continuing to read this thread, you are absolving the author of any/all legal ramifications should you inflict any damage or injury, and are agreeing to the terms and conditions.

 

Yeah I thought it was a bit risky thig...but if it's working for him and he's a mechanical engineer or claims to be, so he should have learned about the forces and figured it safe for him.

The comment doesn't make any sense. If you need to work on one brake with jack stands what do you do? You use a jack, lift up truck, insert jack stand to desired location. Now replace jack stand if you didn't have one with wood car stand...not high enough... take two wooden car stand and stack them up to the height you need. Yes the wood stand will take up more space because it's designed to be under the wheels, but can be used under the frame rails when working outside the vehicle. The advantage is when working under the stands are under the wheels so you have more working space.

If you really love your jack stands... well then use them...not trying to convince you. Just posting an option to making more space underneath a vehicle to work on.

Ah... I have wood glue and the structural screws hold them in place.... how is housing construction done? I'm not saying that laying flat is bad, but this design would work as well. How much lateral force do you think on a static load? I've already spec out the shear force of the screw and glue.

 

Yeah I was also worried about getting the wood wet, so i"ll probably seal it with paint or clear coat for wood. Do you know if 1/4" diameter screw is too much for 2x4s? Plywood is strong, but I wouldn't use it for car stand...2x4s is the smallest I go.

 

I guess I will...should arrive today. I got delayed though...damn video card died on me....had to research for a new one...hoping to get one stand done by the weekend with all the other work I got. Thanks for the reply.

 

That is also ridiculous.. When I work on a vehicle I like to have it level.. What you're suggesting either props one corner way higher than the others or makes it way lower. There's no adjustability. And no space savings. Just trying to be realistic here.

 

I thought that was the scenario you were describing... if you just want to lift the front only... put each wood car stand on each side of the frame rails....just as you would with jack stands if you had to work on brakes. I thought you wanted to use only with jack stand and lift a few inches to take the tire off. Either way if you enjoy the jack stands...stick with it. Like I said I'm not trying to convince you. I'm not here to argue just to argue. You seem to have a workable solution you are happy with it... then great.

 

What I'm saying is I would want to be able to take one tire off and then set the frame down on a jack stand that keeps the truck level. The frame is certainly more than 13" off the ground and not 26" off the ground so with the wooden stands you're gonna have your truck leaning one direction or another since you cant adjust the height of the wooden stands. Which seems like a pretty big downfall to me.

 

In this situation, take the 13" wood stand and add a few more 2x4s to the height you want to level out your truck. There's no chance of the truck collapsing since you got 3 wheels on the ground and the temporary wood pieces wouldn't shift because of it. There's no downfall unless you really want it to be.

Here's an example...eventhough in this picture all 3 wheels are lifted...the one wheel is off and the wood stand is on the frame rails.


It's from pro touring website...this is a car builder website of classic cars. There's rubber in between the wood and frame.

 

Sure, I get that with enough effort it's doable. But then you have to keep extra spare pieces around as well, taking up even more space and making a bigger hassle to do any work. Just seems to me you're trying really hard to do something that has little to no actual benefit.

 

I guess that's why there are so many pro shops like DSE (detroit speed) and the pro touring folks that actually uses them on a daily basis. Generally if there's no value in something I read...I just move on. If this doesn't help you... I'm glad you have a solution that works for you.

I started cutting up some 2x4s tonight and came up with some more ideas I like. Have to make new drawings.

 

Meet "Ernesto" the nested wooded car stand. I can stand all 4 of them on top of each other. This is the first one. I just used the GRK R4 screws. It weights about 34 lbs without the wheel chokes. It's about 15% less in weight than the original design I had and 1" shorter. I might design in a compartment to slide the floor jack into the bottom car stand and then with the jack, I can lift all 4 car stand to its destination.

This is the first of 4 wooden wheel car stand... been super busy and only time to make one so far, unfortunately home depot wood is not straight as I like it to be, so I might return the rest of the wood I have and buy from a higher end source.

I see some more uses out of these wooden car stands.

 

Cool, that's a better design.

 

Thank you, I agree... find little chance of this stand racking and it has a wider base so reduces the chance of tip too. Now I just have to find quality lumber and make new cuts for the other three stands. I'm going to seal the wood with paint and hopefully it'll last for a very long time.

 

Here (Seattle/Everett area) Lowe's and Home Depot screws and nails are 2 to 4 times more expensive than as good or better quality from Dunn Lumber or Tacoma Screw.

 

I know that we use dimensional, hard wood 4x4's building a box cribbing to hold up what ever vehicles were lifting with our air bags and stabalizing the vehicles. Holds a lot of weight when built correct.

 

I got my GRK R4 on Amazon for decent price. I had no issues with them given the price point. The GRK RSS, I used a few, but I didn't see much more gripping power, so I'll save them for other projects. Seattle and Oregon have beautiful lumber...at least the forest are very nice. It'll be my last time I get lumber from home depot at east for 2x4 and 2x6s. I'll have to get in contact with local lumber yard with better grade stock.

4x4's is way overkill and safe, but it's too heavy. I'm comfortable with what I designed. The previous design I had, my professor (mechanical engineer) signed off on that design, so this design is more robust...so I believe it's safe.