I had my front end up on two stands and just now I jacked up the rear. The garage floor must be slightly uneven (though it doesn't look it) because no matter what height settings I put the jack stands on, one of the two rear stands has NO weight on it. In other words, the car is up in the air but only being supported by three stands. The fourth stand is right there (frame rail is about a quarter inch above it) so I'm not worried about it falling, but I am a little worried about putting stress on the frame given that there's no support from the rear driver's side. I wanted to keep it up for a week or two to do some underbody work...is this a bad idea?

I guess I'll try to find a piece of metal to put under the one stand...pain in the @$$. Maybe I'm just being paranoid about my Max's frame...

 

Mine does that all the time too. I've left it like that for several days in the past. I have shimmed the other side, but just a little to much and the other side is off the stand then. I think the body is just pretty rigid in that area.

 

Thanks, Eric. I'll probably just leave it like this for a couple of days unless I can find some sheet metal to use as a shim.

 

Why not just push the free jack stand more toward the rear until it takes some load? Thats what I do. That said, it isn't like the frame is going to twist permanently.

 

Yeah, as I said I'm being paranoid/obsessive about it...I took off the wheel on that side so there's really not much weight over there, although the gas tank is completely full....

I did try pushing that stand back but it didn't touch the frame rail at any point. Wait...eureka: I'll just make both back stands one notch below the front ones, so that I can slide this stand further back along the rail and it will touch. Thanks Broaner!

BTW, we should look into that chassis-stiffening foam soon. Remind me if I forget, I'm gonna do a little more online research to see if I can find anything more about this "hathane" stuff.

 

The reason my car isn't running is due to ideas like that(the foam). Bastard... J/K of course.

 

Just keep the jackstand in place. That happened to me when I did my brake job this past weekend in my coworkers garage. The car sat the 3 jackstands the whole time. If you want, you can throw some wood under the jackstand if you have.

 

Thanks, I wasn't too worried but I plan to keep it up for a couple of weeks so I went back and messed with it: I put the front stands on 6 notches high and the rear two on 4 notches high, and I put the left rear one about 6 inches back on the frame rail. Presto, all four stands are fully loaded now.

 

don't worry about it.. the unibody is designed to be able to flex a little bit like that and not be damaged...