micky wrote:
I learned in the past couple weeks that blacktop at 80 degrees iirc is
soft enough that the wheels of a floor jack, or the bottom outline of
jack stands will sink into the blacktop. This is an especial problem
with a floor jack because it's meant to roll backwards as the car is
lifted, but if the wheels are stuck in the blacktop, the support plate
of the jack will move underneath and wrt the car, making scarey noises
at the very least.

Not only that but when I'm jacking up the right side, after I had jacked
up the left and rested it on a jack stand, the jack did NOT move wrt to
car. Instead it made the whole car move and that made the jackstand on
the left side tip partly over.

And going down it makes even scarier noises.

I should have laid down plywood, just a little bigger than the jack, so
it would roll.


However the weather was about 70 degrees in the past few days, and
nothing sank into the blacktop, and the floor jack rolled as it's
supposed to.

For 14 dollars, they sell a ~10 pound plastic bucket of stuff to fix the
blacktop, but it's too cold at night to use it now. Next summer I'll
patch the parking lot I've been using. I hope no one notices before
then. ;-)

Yep, toss down as large a hunk of GOOD plywood as possible if you're
trying to use a jack on anything other than solid concrete.

--
Steve W.