Hey all,
I've been reading around a lot of the forums for how to jack up my 2008.5 Mazdaspeed 3 (including one of the threads here). After much research, it's still not perfectly clear the ideal method of getting jack stands in the right location under the front of the car. There have been some really bad ideas (one guy was talking about using the cross member under his oil pan or something), and some not bad ideas. Spoke with a friend as well, and wanted to get the definitive "how to get your car on jack stands" thread. Afterwards I could document with pictures and process as a separate thread that we can mark sticky. (I've written technical documentation for years, so this is something I should be able to handle without issue.)
I created this gallery on imgur with the best pictures I was able to find of the official(?) jack points. I'll be assuming that these are the only points in which are safe to jack from.
http://imgur.com/a/D30JM
Jack points on pinch plate:
Jack points on cross member:
Starting off, a low profile jack with a long handle seems to make this nearly trivial, since it should be able to reach the central jacking point of the car. Since I have a standard 3-ton jack and 2x 3-ton jack stands, this is a non-starter for me. I don't plan to purchase a separate jack at this point.
Because the cross member seems to connect and sit directly behind the front pinch plate, it is very difficult if not impossible to jack up the vehicle, and also place the jack stand on the pinch plate. A suggestion from my friend was to use the rear pinch point to lift the car enough to get the jack stand under the front pinch plate point. Repeat on the other side. Another sane suggestion seems to be to use a block of wood (4"x4"x2") inside the cup on the jack, with the grain at a 90 degree angle from the pinch plate (likely to avoid splitting the grain with the weight of the plate on the wood). The wood block seems to be to avoid bending or indenting the pinch plate with sharp edges on the jack.
At that point, I was thinking I would then have lots of space to get the jack to the front jacking point on the car (marked with the X) to lift the car to the ideal working height, and adjust the jack stands to suit.
Does this make sense? Is there a better known method for approaching this? How have you lifted your car for the purposes of oil changes, RMM changes, etc?
Additional question
I have a single car garage, and it appears to be nearly impossible to really move around and get the car lifted in this situation. The alternative is to then work on the driveway; however the driveway is not level since it is inclined. Of course there would be a parking break and tire blocks. The incline is not massive; it appears to be a standard driveway incline. Is this something people do when working under the car? I'm not too worried about that kind of thing just for rotating or changing tires.