quote:Originally posted by pantera chris:Hi Richard, why not move the lift more in the direction the rear of the car? The pinch welds are not jacking points, they are to weak in my opinion, are the connectors able to move inboard to reach the standard jacking points?quote:Originally posted by rbarkley671:
I chose to use the pinch weld as the lift point to get it well behind the CG in the rear. As most of you probably the rear jack point is very close to the CG of the car and any extra weight (like a body) can lift the noise up. NOT something you want to do 2 ft in the air!
Chris, yes, the strength of the pinch weld was/is a concern. For now it's not a problem but the engine and trans are not in the car. I estimated that the force on the rear welds as is now is only about 600 lbs each side. The force is distributed over the 3" diameter of the hockey puck, so 200 lbs/in. The front welds have about 1/2 that load as their distance from the CG is about double that of the rear (so a 1/3 to 2/3 weight split).
With the full ~3000 lb weight this would increase by about 30%. This is probably not a problem, but who knows. Also, the weight on the rear could be reduced by shifting more of it to the front. The pickup points on the lift slide to where you want them and could be adjusted to be 50/50 which would mean ~750 lbs on each corner. I'm guessing this would be just fine.
To answer you question "are the connectors able to move inboard to reach the standard jacking points" the answer is yes, sort of. My original plan was to run a steel channel cross bar between the two lifts and pickup the motor mounts as a lift point. The "factory" rear lift points could also be used. With the 64" spacer bar I decided to go with, some kind of cross bar would also be required as their separation is about 6" less than the 50" minimum spec for the 64" bar.
Here is a graphic of the Pantera jack points I drew up to make my decision. As you can see, my wife's Lexus was also part of the decision. Also to know, the Spacer Bars are not that expensive ($110) so you can get one for each of your cars if needed.
