Anyone have any ideas on how to safely jack both wheels on one side at at time, for rotating tires, so I don't have to keep moving the little jack that came with the car back and forth?

Or what the proper jack points are for using a floor jack to jack up the car from the end? I can't find any info in the owners manual other than how to change a tire and the jack support points look pretty iffy for using with anything but the supplied jack.

 

I jack the car by the front lift point.. place a stand in the back under the rear lift point.... Place the other stand under the subframe.

 

What danjreed said. I use a low profile floor jack on the front point, which lifts the whole side (due to MINIs being short and stiff). Then jack stands.

I posted about a month ago that, while you "can" lift the whole side by using the rear point, you can inadvertently make a MINI "see-saw" as it pivots diagonally high rear / low opposite side front. It'll get your attention when it does that.

 

Invest in jack stands and a floor jack. Using OEM jack for anything other than changing a flat, is just asking for trouble.

 

I have a good floor jack, and some stands. Problem is, I can't figure out where the safe jackpoints are for lifting with it. If I put the cup of the floorjack under those plastic boxes, I'm afraid I'll just break them.

 

Are the boxes hollow? You can cut 2x4s to fit in them... That or use a long 2x4 to spread the load out across the rocker area...

 

Those are jacking points. Use them with your floor jack with no problems.

 

tag line: those are the jacking points but not the ONLY jacking points . . .

forget the jack that comes with the car ... that's for emergency road use ONLY

go buy a really cheap and small floor jack and the smallest set of jack stands you can find. I got a jack and two 1.5 ton stands for $35

then see https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ck-points.html

As demonstrated there, I can get both tires on one side off the ground and the car supported on jack stands AT the factory jack points ....

Been doing this for me and the guys who bring me cars to service for 10 years and have yet to have problem one . . .

 

Thanks all.!

I made a little block out of some scrap oak flooring to go inside the jack point, and screwed it to another piece sized to fit the cup on the floor jack, worked great, lifting just the front until both wheels were off the ground.

My suspicion is that the plastic jack point is tougher than it looks and my efforts were unnecessary but what the hell.

It really is worth getting setup one way of the other to lift the car this way, as it makes rotating the tires effortless, which encourages you to actually do it occasionally. Even if your dealer is doing ti when the car is serviced the crazy Mini service intervals are too long for best results.

 

Here is a very useful site for this and many other tasks performed on your Mini.

http://www.pelicanparts.com/techarti..._Your_MINI.htm

 

I put the jack disc next to the jack point boxes, then put the jack stands under the jack points. The jack leaves a couple marks on the plastic, but there's solid metal under there to jack from.

I've also put a 2x4 between the two jack points, and then jacked up from the center of the 2x4. I don't recommend this, though. It's hard to get balanced, and can slip when you're jacking the second side as the angle changes. Really, you can jack the whole side from just inside the front jack point and place both front and back jack stands. It's a good stiff chassis. Hell, it's too stiff sometimes, and the rear point doesn't make it all the way to the jack stand until I do the other side.

 

I use the jacking point under the front subframe. Then I can put a jack stand under the forward side jacking point. That's the points 1 in the diagram: