I was down at the Grand Am 250 in Miami a couple of weeks ago and saw the Nuzzo Mini and Sterling Mini go at it. Great fun!
I noticed they both had an interesting jack set up.
They have some way of jacking up the front of their cars by putting the jack dead center in the front and a couple of pumps later the front is up and jack stands in place. Nuzzo's set-up can also do the same at the rear.
Where our stock exhaust tips are, Nuzzo's car has a steel bar hanging down that fits the race jack. I can't see where his exhaust pipes exit.

My question is; What is the best way to get my stock Mini up on four jack stands?
I have a racing jack and have had one side of the car up but the suspension on the down side makes an awful complaining noise (creaking like hell) as I'm going up.
Makes me way uncomfortable, as I feel the suspension isn't designed to take that angle I would imagine.

Any better ways or suggestions??

Yfoiler.

 

It's kind of a pain, but I use 2 jacks. :smile:

 

As you can see, the racing MINIs have altered the exhaust so as to do what you describe.

For the rest of us, here's what I do:

Start with the front driver's side mount. Lift it up and you'll notice the unibody construction allows the rear to lift as well. Insert a jackstand at the rear now, then let the front down. Now place your jack just enough to the side of the mount that you can position your jack stand in on the mount. Now lift up and place the jack stand at the front. Since it's already got a stand at the rear, it's leveraged and doesn't place a large load on the undertray as you jack up. No need to fear. I've done it many, many times.

R

 

Thanks very much for the help.
I'm going to give your method a try.
It's just dissapointing doing it side to side vs. front to back like the race cars.

Next time I'm at the track I'm going to poke my nose under there and see just what they have done. I think it's a very useful mod. At least I could get the front done. I'm not about to move my MagnaFlow tips from the center of the rear though!

Thanks again,

Yfoiler

 

I am guessing you don't get a good response because no one wants to tell you something and have you get hurt. I have put the Cooper on all 4 one time. As I recall I put one side up and then the other. I was hoping RandyBMC might respond to this or a previous thread similar to this. I have never seen a good response sorry!
Good luck

RAT

 

>>I was hoping RandyBMC might respond to this or a previous thread similar to this. I have never seen a good response sorry!

Gee, guess I'm chopped liver then, eh?

R

 

Take a look at the first picture of this
how-to thread.

It clearly shows how to put the car up on four jack stands.

 

Sorry dave didn't mean your response wasn't good! Just meant that this thread and another similar that I saw didn't get alot of responses.

 

The Problem is that we don't want to mess up the bodywork by just putting the floorjack anywhere and hoping we get a place strong enough to lift the car ... one of the How-To's shows places that are strong enough but they still may scratch the paint and allow rust to form ...

On my Classics, there were obvious places on the subframes to lift the car - and scratch the paint on those, or you could put the floorjack under the gearbox and lift - but that world suspend the car by the engine mounts and they wouid rip eventually ... so what i did was weld a bar that would fit in my jack in place of the normal lifting 'pad' and catch the subframe with little feeties at the ends of the bar, keeping denting and scratching to a minimum ...

When i get around to actually doing more maintenance on the MINI, i'm gonna go down to White Center Blacksmith & Welding and with a couple of sketches and have them weld up some scraps of steel to fit the jack (one for the front and one for the back) that will catch the subframes in just the right places to lift the whole front or back ... and it will only cost a couple of bucks ...