Safety Question

[Glen C.]

When replacing my passenger's seat the rear inboard mounting plate rivets broke. I've purchased replacement soft rivets and would like to reinstall the bracket this week while I'm on vacation. I don't have a lift and wanted to know how I should safely raise the car to get that far underneath to peen the rivets. Is my floor jack safe enough or should I also use jack stands or another method of support?

Thanks,

Glen

[Terry M.]

Re: Safety Question

If your body is going under any car -- use quality jack stands to support the car. Hydraulic jacks are not intended to support the car; they are only intended to lift the car. The jacks that were supplied with our Corvettes were only intended to lift the car enough to get a flat tire off and a good tire on. Never get any part of your body under the car using the factory supplied jack.

Some folks, even while using jack stands, will place a tire or stack pieces of 6 x 6 wood under the car as another safety support int he event the jack stands give way. Sort of like a belt and suspenders. If one has the material on hand and the room to still work under the car with this kind of material there it is not a bad idea. Anyone who has even had a car fall on them will appreciate the need for this redundancy.

[Duke W.]

Re: Safety Question

Absolutely never, ever crawl under a car that is only supported by a floor jack. Plenty of guys have been killed that way.

Use jackstands either at one or both ends of the car to get the necessary work clearance. I also usually leave the jack under a jack point, but just barely touching.

Floor jack and jack stand points are in your CSM.

Duke

[Glen C.]

Re: Safety Question

Thanks for the advice. I'll get some jack stands and I've also got some 6 x 6 stock in the wood shop for a secondary support.

Glen

[Bill H.]

Re: Safety Question

+1 on what Duke said....use the jack as a secondary safety device.

Also, for the few extra bucks it costs, don't buy 3 ton stands, get the 6 ton stands. A pair of 6 ton's will run about $45.

[Steven B.]

Re: Safety Question

len, I agree with the 6 ton jack stands, belt AND suspenders, and leaving the jack barely touching. In addition, depending on the amount of height you need under the car I raise each side (I always use 4 jack stands) about 8 inches then go to the other side and raise until level, then back to the other side so as to not have too much lateral force on a jack stand and blocks to guard against falling. I lower it the same way, each side a little at a time. And as said, never us ethe scissors jack that came with the car---while changing a tire in a parking lot mine stripped the threads and the car came down pretty fast.

Steve

[Joe L.]

Re: Safety Question

When replacing my passenger's seat the rear inboard mounting plate rivets broke. I've purchased replacement soft rivets and would like to reinstall the bracket this week while I'm on vacation. I don't have a lift and wanted to know how I should safely raise the car to get that far underneath to peen the rivets. Is my floor jack safe enough or should I also use jack stands or another method of support?

Thanks,

Glen

Glen-----


I agree with the others on the use of jack stands. If raising all 4 corners, I don't even like to use 4 jack stands. I much prefer the front on ramps with the wheels chocked and the rear on jack stands.

However, aside from that issue which has been well covered, let's get into this issue of the rivets breaking on the seat mounting plate. I've never seen this happen. I would strongly suspect that for it to occur there would have to be a condition of serious corrosion which greatly weakened the rivets. That corrosion may be elsewhere, too.

[Duke W.]

Re: Safety Question

I spent a lot of time in past decades under a car supported by jackstands, and it never bothered me, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe it's a byproduct of coming to grips with your mortality.

Lately it's been: "What if the big one (earthquake) hits while I'm under the car."

So now when I have a car up on two or four jackstands, in addition to leaving the jack in place, just touching the jack point, I place two to four more jackstands somewhere under the car to provide additional support if it shakes off the loaded stands.

Sometimes I'm surprised I made it to my age, but now that I have, I want my full actuarial life expectancy, so I take a lot more safety precautions than I did in the past. You're never too old to do something stupid!

Duke

[Paul J.]

Re: Safety Question

Glen, I have several jack stands but I prefer to use wooden blocks when I'm supporting a car. I have several old guardrail spacer blocks that are 6x8x14. When laid on their side they won't tip and can't be crushed.

Being careful is just good shop practice. The late John Muir (he died of natural causes) had a stern warning in his book (the "Idiot" book for Volkswagons) about the dangers of being under a car with only a jack, or heaven forbid, concrete blocks.

Paul

[Glen C.]

Re: Safety Question

Joe,

I'm planning to make arrangements to get the car on a lift soon and check all the rivets since this happened. I had it in for some work last month and looked at the underside and overall it appeared in fairly good condition.But I figure there are other rivets that could be week.

The rivets in question did appear to have corrossion.

Glen

[Glen C.]

Re: Safety Question

Joe,

I meant to include a photo of the plate.

Glen

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[Joe L.]

Re: Safety Question

Joe,

I meant to include a photo of the plate.

Glen

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Glen-----


I would say that corrosion is significant on this plate although, cleaned up, it's probably re-usable. I would expect that the rivets could also have been affected by this corrosion.

When you removed the seat retaining bolt from this plate was an extremely high amount of break-away torque required? Even then, I would not expect rivets in good condition to be broken but, at least, that might explain part of what occurred.