Is the Ford Jack the worst jack ever?

L

lulzyboy

Active user
Sep 19, 2014
68
1
Pärnu, Estonia
I was trying to change my tyres back over now that winter appears to have blown over, I jacked up the two fronts, changed them no problem, went to change the back offside, lifted the car up, took the old wheel off then boom. The jack decided to go into some L shape hell.

I had no way to remove the jack other than getting another one, lifting the car up urther up the chassis and then removing it. Sadly the damage it's caused to the to the body of the puma is annoying and I was wondering if its possible to bend it back into shape in the position its in:

http://i.imgur.com/tizKv7m.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wQHGnxL.jpg

I've got no idea what caused the jack to do that as it was flat against the ground the entire time.
 
Emergency use only.
For anything at home, I use a Halfords trolley jack, which while not brilliant in itself is a million times better than something that should remain hidden out of sight under the spare wheel.
 
I won't use it. If I'm home, I've got my Sealy suicide jack. If I'm on the road, it's probably unsafe to work on my car roadside and I have RAC cover, infinite patience, and a smartphone with games on.

Screw that Ford jack.
 
Never Never NEVER! use this peice of meccano, no that's an insult to meccano. Never use the supplied jack except in absolute emergency, it's an accident waiting to happen. If you have no option at all, don't place it too close to the end of the sills, you need to be appx 4" in from either end. As soon as the car body starts to lift, get some chocks under there, anything even old logs in the hedgerow etc. The crunch point literally is when the suspension has reached the end of it's travel and the jack starts to take the weight of the whole car.
 
As above, they're utter crap. Treat yourself to a cheap trolley jack from Argos for £30. It'll come in a blow moulded hard case so easy to store. You're lucky that sill isn't rotten like many are starting to be! That jack could have gone straight through to inside the car. It'll want tapping down from inside and then filling, sealing and painting. Lucky escape!
 
I heard a blood curdling story from my dad about an incident involving an individual changing a wheel in a hardshoulder (on the nearside too) so I echo much of the above, I pay for RAC and I'm quite happy to let the man in the big illuminated van park up with flashing lights and hi-viz do the job.

I'll change wheels using a wheel changing jack in "more normal" circumstances but I can understand why people wouldn't want to do it.

Something else I'm very pro is the warning triangle, I once came across a broken-down car on the exit of a sweeping corner on a locally notorious "driving road"; no triangle and I would have had no idea about the tatty old Rover 213 obstructing the road out of sight, thankfully the owner had placed a triangle in the road on the approach to the corner, meaning I crawled around the corner, no problems.I'll no doubt get shot-down-and-p*ssed-on but I really think carrying a triangle should be a requirement.
 
benham said:
... but I really think carrying a triangle should be a requirement.
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Isn't it? I've been out here so long I had no idea. We have to carry 2 now for 100m and 200m placement, plus hi-viz vests for all occupants inside the cabin, not in the boot as used to be allowed. AND an in-date medical pack. Cops check all that crap too. Big fines if you get caught out.
 
as everyone else has said get yourself a hydrolic trolley jack..you can get em for about £20 but even then dont do work actually under the car unless u have axle stands also..even trolley jacks some times give..
as for any car manufacturer jack...just dont use it as if it dont collapse it will destroy the rust protection on the sill imo..
the jack for my transit makes me laugh as it states the van must be empty b4 use...hmm can just see me emptying it out on the side of the road..
 
I've had two incidents with Ford jacks that will ensure I never use them again.

1) Jacking the Cougar up on what I thought was a level surface. Turned out it must have ever so slighlty off as, just at the point when I'd got the N/S rear wheel off the car, I watched the jack topple sideways in that agonising slow-motion-but-nothing-you-can-do fashion. 'Fortunately' the bulk of the expanded jack itself stopped the whole corner of the car hitting the ground and totalling the disc, hub etc, but it also put a whacking great dent and bulge in the sill that I'm sure Chris still remembers helping to beat out.

2) Jacking our old Fiesta up. Again at it's highest point (as Al said above, at the point where the wheel leaves the ground and the jack takes the weight) but, mercifully, before I'd removed the wheel, there was an almighty bang as the nylon thread gave way and completely stripped, dumping the car straight back to the ground in the blink of an eye.
 
Arkady001 said:
Isn't it? I've been out here so long I had no idea. We have to carry 2 now for 100m and 200m placement, plus hi-viz vests for all occupants inside the cabin, not in the boot as used to be allowed. AND an in-date medical pack. Cops check all that crap too. Big fines if you get caught out.
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Do you have to carry breathalysers too or is that just in France?
 
Arkady001 said:
Isn't it? I've been out here so long I had no idea. We have to carry 2 now for 100m and 200m placement, plus hi-viz vests for all occupants inside the cabin, not in the boot as used to be allowed. AND an in-date medical pack. Cops check all that crap too. Big fines if you get caught out.
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No, the UK has no requirements to carry anything in the vehicle at all.

That does sound rather draconian (although I think it's in keeping with most EU countries) but I think here the minimum should be a warning triangle after the incident that occurred to myself. I'd have killed somebody if they hadn't of had the sensibility to place one to warning oncoming traffic.
 
Quicksilver said:
Do you have to carry breathalysers too or is that just in France?
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Just in France, but since most of us travel through France to get to anywhere else, technically we should carry them. I don't and won't til I have to in Germany. Not sure about Belgium or Holland which I also transit regularly.

In France also, the hi-viz vests are suppised to be on the parcel shelf so coppers can see you're carrying them... Sod that. Anything that's not black reflects off the rear screen in sunshine, making visibility to the rear impossible.
 
there was talk many many moons back about triangles, was suggested that it was 100 yards on everyday roads and 300 yards on m/ways-dual carriage ways iirc, however as roads got faster busier and some deaths on hard shoulders and the like, it was decided that it wasn't a good idea, as walking down a hard shoulder in the middle of the night with a warning trianle gave very little protection the the individual carry it (a lot of carrigeways both motor and dual are unlit), the other thing is a lot of the cheap ones are too small to be of any effect and that they are too light and are easily blown over with the side draught of heavy vehicles.
as said following deaths, serious injuries and damage it was suggested that the best way is too get people out of the car and behind the barriers where possible
not saying that it's not a good/bad idea, but as with anything peoples safety come first and i think it should be down to the situation to decide whether it should be deployed
do think Hi Viz vests area good idea as often see people walking to emergency phones at night in dark cloths and/or attempting repairs/wheel changes
 
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I carry a pair of breathalysers in France and stuff the hi-viz against the rear-side window(C-Max) so technically it can be seen but the reflection from it is minimised.
 
I think after the accident on the M1 today, the wisdom of abandoning a stationary car and moving to the other side of the barriers should be pretty obvious.
When i had my crash in Belgium a couple of years ago, I briefly considered walking back down the slush covered motorway to drop a triangle and just thought 'screw that!"
Someone even stopped and offered to help me push it from the outside lane to the hard shoulder. Seriously? Are you mad?
I just waited til the recovery wagon showed up.
More important at this time of year are waterproofs and cold weather gear including overtrousers. I stuff my old arctic kit in the boot from October to April.
What use is a hi-viz vest if you die of exposure?
 
Arkady001 said:
I think after the accident on the M1 today, the wisdom of abandoning a stationary car and moving to the other side of the barriers should be pretty obvious.
When i had my crash in Belgium a couple of years ago, I briefly considered walking back down the slush covered motorway to drop a triangle and just thought 'screw that!"
Someone even stopped and offered to help me push it from the outside lane to the hard shoulder. Seriously? Are you mad?
I just waited til the recovery wagon showed up.
More important at this time of year are waterproofs and cold weather gear including overtrousers. I stuff my old arctic kit in the boot from October to April.
What use is a hi-viz vest if you die of exposure?
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I don't disagree, but I think used correctly a triangle is smart idea in places where it's safe and logical to place one. I can only speak from the experience I had where one probably saved a life (probably mine on reflection) but that was on a quiet B-Road in the day time, not on a motorway.

I've spent a fair bit of time waiting in hard shoulders (the perils of driving up and down motorways for 50,000 miles a year) and thankfully only had punctures to contend with, even so I'm straight up the bank! I put a post in the 'Twat Dungeon' some time ago about a school bus I'd seen broken down on the M1 where an absolute mouth-breather of a teacher had lined the kids up like skittles in the hardshoulder whilst the bus was being recovered......

I won't play in hard-shoulders, my father as an old ambulanceman wouldn't drive in them either unless he really, really, really had to as they're full of all sorts of debris that goes un-noticed whilstling by in the live lanes. He had an old story about how he nearly ploughed in to a car that parked up in the hardshoulder to let the kids out for a wee, this was in the days of V6 petrol mk1 (or possibly mk2, this would have been late 1970s into early 1980s?) Transit ambulances with three-speed autoboxes and drum brakes all round, aparently they went alright but they didn't stop in a hurry!

I still think a triangle is a smart idea in the right circumstances though.
 
Arkady001 said:
More important at this time of year are waterproofs and cold weather gear including overtrousers. I stuff my old arctic kit in the boot from October to April.
What use is a hi-viz vest if you die of exposure?
Click to expand...

think most intelligent people put Hi Viz's on the outside of heavy coats and rain jackets when they wear them
 
I 'repaired' the exhaust on our old 306 with a Monster can a jubilee clip on the M5 one night. That was interesting.......

I was wearing full orange high viz waterproofs though:LOL:
 
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