4 replies to this topic

[Xinarin13]

I am having problems with my new to me mini ('96 MPI). We are living on a military base and I had the shop here take a look at it to see if they could identify the problem last week. This week I went there to rent a bay to work on Dusty(my mini) and realized that the arms are not long enough on the vehicle hoist to reach the subframe. I looked and sure enough there is new damage to the sills that was not there before they worked on it. They lifted from the 4 corner sills that you lift from on most vehicles and crushed them a bit on the front. I am upset, but since it is a free service on base here I am going to let it go I think and move on.

​This brings me to my problem. They don't really have many floor jacks here as most will use the hoist to lift their vehicle. This also makes working on any vehicle much easier obviously and I would like to use it, but the arms fully extended are around 15cm too short to reach the subframe. Has anyone figured out a solution to this? Is there some sort of trick I am missing? Is there perhaps something I can use to get it to work? I have this image in my head of using 2 4x4's, one across the front and one across the back as a bridge under the mini between the hoist arms, but I don't know if that is a terrible idea or not.

 

Please help!

 

Thanks in advance!

 

-Gavin

[cian]

Are the lift arms a different length? Mine are longer on one end and I reverse the mini so the longer arms reach the rear frame then the front arms lift from the firewall corners

[Xinarin13]

They are on the lift I was working on yesterday, but the one I was working on today had equal length arms... I can just barely get on them in this bay, the arms are longer, but the towers are also spaced further apart. The only issue I am running into now is that because of where the line coming from the battery is located, I don't have much room to put the foot, so the arms hit my tires a bit. I am tempted to move the wire and relocate the screws a few inches to accommodate easier positioning and I might be able to get it up without touching the tires... at this rate I just might have to deal... lift it up... set it down on jack stands... remove wheels... lift it back up to work on all brakes at eye level... that or just work off of jack stands.

 

Either way, I successfully used the hoist to get to the bottom nut on the top engine steady and eliminated that terrible bang I got whenever I let up off of the pedal!

 

Still wish lifting it with a hoist was easier...

[Compdoc]

I would suggest a couple of planks of wood across the front and rear pads to spread the load across the whole floor. The ridges in the floor will prevent the fuel and brake pipes being crushed.

Either way the corner plates, at the ends of the sills are not structural plates or jacking points merely brackets to hold the body during manufacture, and are only cosmetic. I have removed mine whilst replacing the sills.

[Xinarin13]

Since you brought up replacing the sills, out of curiosity, around how much does a job like that run? Have you replaced any other body pieces, and if so what did those jobs run? (I'm preparing for my future lol)