![]() ![]() I wish Toyota used cross hatching on the dip stick, the oil stays so clean it is hard to read on my 8+ year old car even after 6 months. I pull the car up on the ramps and pull the drain plug, remove the filter housing, change the cartridge and let the oil drain overnight.Īlthough my Camry has a claimed capacity of 4.7 quarts, it take 5 qts to fill it when I do that. When I do my once yearly oil change now, I do it when the engine is hot. I’m the wrong side of 80 but I still enjoy working on a car.I just try to make sure I have everything I might need in reach before I start because getting from standing to under the car and back up is frequently the hardest part of the job. When I use the stands I always back them up with something. I threw out my old steel ramps years ago, they creaked and groaned. That is getting very close to the rated capacity of the 2 ton stands, I like to have plenty of reserve capacity. Your post made it sound like you were under the vehicle supported only by two hydraulic jacks.Īs far as your Durango, more than half of that 6700 is on the front wheels. What you are calling jacks are jack stands. When I started reading your post, it scared the heck out of me. The new 3-ton jacks (the red ones) have the same mechanism but have a heavy-duty double lock. Thinking back, it sounds like attempted suicide to use these types of jacks on cars. ![]() In other words, in the past I had half of the cars weight rest on two skinny pins, one in each jack. The complete weight of whatever part of the car rests on the ratchet bar and its weight is subsequently held in place by that skinny pin. There is no other safety pin or bold to backup this mechanism. The locking pawl is the part that holds the ratchet bar in place. The locking pawl slides over the locking handle and is held in place by only a skinny pin. I compared the new jacks with my 2-ton jacks, and I noticed something that I found very disturbing on the 2-ton jacks (the ones I have been using for over 15 years). But I purchased a new pair of 3-ton jacks to be used in the future on my other cars, which are not as heavy. I plan on using my son’s scissor lift which is rated at 8000 lbs. Seems that I have been playing with an accident to happen. Anyways, I removed everything, let the car down and went inside to have a cup of coffee and had a good day doing something else. I have done this hundreds of times and never really had any second thoughts crawling under a car and working on the underside, but this time it was different. It wasn’t ten seconds when suddenly I had this overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t be doing this. So, a few days ago I was ready to replace an O2 sensor on my Dodge Durango, lifted the car, placed a couple of jacks under the frame and crawled under the car. ![]()
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