[changcaine]

Today I jacked the front wheel of my van using the bottle jack. It appears to me that the only way this can be done using the jack points in the manual is by putting the jack on about 2 and a half inches of plank and angling the jack so that the handle goes trough the wheel well. (I have the standard U-haul running boards.) Please enlighten me if I'm wrong. I will try to post a pic with this.

 

[EddieZ]

I've jacked up my T 250 with the stock Jack, with no spacer beneath it. It's hard to tell from your pic, but, I suspect you did not use the prescribed jack point. The jack points have come up in conversation, even recently. The manual could definitely be clearer. AND, there's a difference between 'lift points," for putting the vehicle on an overhead rack... and jack points. Consensus is that each jack point is a round, horizontal section of rod in a bracket, about 2 inches from the vehicle transport hook points, at the rear of the front subframe.

 

[alarmist]

What he said. You're doing it wrong.

 

[vipvanilla]

Looks to me like the jack should've been pushed further toward center about 4 inches under the black section. I believe that's where i placed my jack and had no issue whatsoever with needing it to be elevated.

 

[alarmist]

Sheesh. Look under the van. There is a (approximately) 1" x 4" tube, aligned front to back, in a bracket at the outboard end of the trans cross member. It's about a foot behind the front tire and a foot inboard. The jack goes under the tube. The tube is the lifting point. Not the sheetmetal, not the subframe, not anything flat you could deform and damage. Why a round thing? Likely because it made sense to some engineer. I don't plan on overthinking it. It works just fine.

 

[rimcanyon]

Sheesh. Look under the van. There is a (approximately) 1" x 4" tube, aligned front to back, in a bracket at the outboard end of the trans cross member. It's about a foot behind the front tire and a foot inboard. The jack goes under the tube. The tube is the lifting point. Not the sheetmetal, not the subframe, not anything flat you could deform and damage. Why a round thing? Likely because it made sense to some engineer. I don't plan on overthinking it. It works just fine.

I had a flat tire today, and purely by luck I used the jack point you describe. However, I could not get the stock jack to go up enough to get the tire off the ground, so I ended up calling AAA. PITA.

It appears that the stock 4Ton bottle jack has two stages, i,e. there is an inner and outer piston. But it stopped raising when the large diameter piston was all the way out, and the inner piston did not extend even with a bit of extra pressure on the jack handle. Is there some trick?

-Dave

 

[Eiko]

But it stopped raising when the large diameter piston was all the way out, and the inner piston did not extend even with a bit of extra pressure on the jack handle. Is there some trick?

There's no trick. Your jack is defective. Get a new one under warranty.

 

[EddieZ]

...

It appears that the stock 4Ton bottle jack has two stages, i,e. there is an inner and outer piston. But it stopped raising when the large diameter piston was all the way out, and the inner piston did not extend even with a bit of extra pressure on the jack handle. Is there some trick?

-Dave

No trick. The inner extension should find its way out. Maybe bad jack.

 

[rimcanyon]

No trick. The inner extension should find its way out. Maybe bad jack.

OK, thanks. I will take it in and see if they will warranty it. I also noticed that the lock nut in the top of the outer piston is loose. I tried extending the jack by turning the top to unscrew it, and the lock nut unthreaded. Lock nut may be the wrong term, it is the nut that is tightened with a pin spanner.

 

[BabyBuffy]

It appears that the stock 4Ton bottle jack has two stages, i,e. there is an inner and outer piston. But it stopped raising when the large diameter piston was all the way out, and the inner piston did not extend even with a bit of extra pressure on the jack handle. Is there some trick?

-Dave

The same thing happened to me when I tried to remove my front tire to install wheel well protectors.

There is definitely a trick. Consider the factory jack a boat anchor and buy a quality jack to replace it. But in the meantime...

When my factory jack failed I added a sizable amount of hydraulic jack fluid to the reservoir. That was all it took to make it extend to its fullest height. Be glad you discovered the problem at home and not in bumfukwhoknows where.


Beginning with this post there is a series of posts on the subject of where to place the jack. Keep reading if you start because at one point I was given incorrect advice that was later corrected so if you don't get to the correction you might be misled. (Edit - I just decided if you aren't the type who wants to read the whole book to find out if the butler did it, YES the 4 inch tube is the correct jacking point.)

http://www.fordtransitusaforum.com/...ion/10474-wheel-well-liners-6.html#post676697

There is a tangent matter I suggest might be useful as well...


http://www.fordtransitusaforum.com/wheels-tires-brakes-suspension/60297-anti-theft-lugnuts.html

 

[alarmist]

I had a flat tire today, and purely by luck I used the jack point you describe. However, I could not get the stock jack to go up enough to get the tire off the ground, so I ended up calling AAA. PITA.

It appears that the stock 4Ton bottle jack has two stages, i,e. there is an inner and outer piston. But it stopped raising when the large diameter piston was all the way out, and the inner piston did not extend even with a bit of extra pressure on the jack handle. Is there some trick?

-Dave

No trick. It's a piece of crap. If you keep pumping sometimes it works. I usually have enough odd bits of lumber on the truck to shim it up. Really should get something functional though.

 

[rimcanyon]

No trick. It's a piece of crap. If you keep pumping sometimes it works. I usually have enough odd bits of lumber on the truck to shim it up. Really should get something functional though.

Yes, I am going to start carrying my 10T Hein Warner and get rid of the stock jack.

On another point, when we swapped the spare tire for the flat, the spare is a full size tire on a regular rim, but it has a warning label saying not to drive on it because the wheel is not equipped with TPMS. Ford bean counters strike again.

If I have a TPMS sender installed in the spare, then it would allow me to rotate the tires using all 5. Has anyone done that? I'm just checking to see if it would confuse the TPMS system if there are 5 wheels with senders.

-Dave

 

[alarmist]

There is a longish thread on that somewhere. Not a problem. The van can only see four sensors. If you put one in the spare and rotate 5 tires, you need to "learn" rather than "calibrate" the 4 active sensors into the computer at each rotation. It's a different process, but no more complicated.

 

[rimcanyon]

Alarmist, thanks for the information. Is the TPMS sensor available aftermarket or do I need to buy the Ford part?

 

[alarmist]

Amazon has them. Search the TPMS threads, the part number/link is probably in there.

 

[Bez]

Be careful with AAA or any road side assistant. They may not know the correct jack point and bend the edge where they jack from. Happened to me at a local tire service merchant :-(

 

[ranxerox]

in 40 years of using hydraulic bottle jacks on an almost weekly basis i have never seen a 2-stage hydraulic bottle jack, this 2-stage Transit jack is something that is all new!

the only place i have saw 2-stage hydraulic jacks (2-stage hydraulic cylinders.) is on dumptrucks to dump the box, and they use a high volume engine driven hydraulic pump with a pressure of 10,000 PSI to jack/lift the dump box.

i threw the transit jack in the metal recycling bin as soon as i saw it and replaced it with a Jet Tools 20-ton hydraulic jack i had laying around.

 

[alarmist]

in 40 years of using hydraulic bottle jacks on an almost weekly basis i have never seen a 2-stage hydraulic bottle jack, this 2-stage Transit jack is something that is all new!

the only place i have saw 2-stage hydraulic jacks (2-stage hydraulic cylinders.) is on dumptrucks to dump the box, and they use a high volume engine driven hydraulic pump with a pressure of 10,000 PSI to jack/lift the dump box.

i threw the transit jack in the metal recycling bin as soon as i saw it and replaced it with a Jet Tools 20-ton hydraulic jack i had laying around.

I recall my Sprinter jack being 2 stage.

https://picclick.co.uk/Brand-new-Mercedes-Benz-Sprinter-Bottle-Jack-263413931024.html#&gid=1&pid=3

I also recall them being hailed as equally unreliable crapsicles by the Sprinter community.

 

[alarmist]

Be careful with AAA or any road side assistant. They may not know the correct jack point and bend the edge where they jack from. Happened to me at a local tire service merchant :-(

This. Why I bought a spare set of rims.

 

[brittles]

Yeah, my local tire dealer bent some metal under my van the first time I took it there. I now have the Ford lifting diagram in my phone to show them.