At my CC with the 4-point above-ground lifts it's easy. Pinch weld or frame rails, the weight is distributed just fine. However, at home all I have is a hydraulic jack and 4 stands.

I just finished straightening the pinch welds back-out [@ school] and rustproofing the underside. The pinches are pretty much unusable for jacking due to fragility (they bend). And I tried one of the rails...after an inch of deflection I stopped.

So, Right now the front subframe gets the fronts off the ground just fine, but there's no graceful way to get the back off and have room for the stands. Any suggestions? Is it imperative that the pinch welds stay vertical, or is it not the end of the world if they get bent over?

Sorry if this seems....trivial. Hasn't really been an issue as the pinches were already bent in places, but they look nice and straight now, and I'd like to try and keep them that way.

 

Put the floor jack under the diff, plenty of room for stands when she's airborne.

 

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Independent suspension...

Or am I missing something? I thought jacking-up by the diff was only okay on cars/trucks with solid axles (or the Mitata). The way I understood it, jacking-up by the diff on an independent suspension resulted in really bad things happening with the halfshafts.

 

Clokker is right, the FSM, and I think the factory owners manny say the same.

 

Use the Diff if jacking up the Rear.
also you can use the subframe mounting bolt points,just in front of the rear Tires,Under the car to jack up that particular side of the car that you are working on.
For the Front you can use the A-arm mounting Bracket points to get the car up.,
NOW..IF you have to use the Subframe rails,Try to get the Jacking point as close the the Front of the Car,where the two metal rail pieces meet at the Bend,under the Firewall/floor area.
You can Put a Piece of 2x6 about a Foot long in between the jack and the Subframe rail and it will Take the Stress off the rail,by evening the load out and it "shouldn't" make a Bend in the rail.( I use this method a lot.).Just don't try to Jack the car Up over 12 inches from the front on the rail.Otherwise it will and Can bend from the Jack being under the rail.

 

Right, diff for the rear. Thanks! Takes a load off my mind.
About the front though, just the A-arm mounts, or is the middle of the subframe okay? Because I did that twice before and the piece didn't bend. Was that an evil mistake?

 

for the front I always jack it up on the rail and put the stands on the A-arm mounts....most stands have that round dip that fits the arms so well

 

I always jack the front from the middle of the front crossmember. That's what the FSM recommends when using a hydraulic floor jack.

They also recommend jacking the rear from the differential as clokker has said.

As for where to put the jackstands, the FSM isn't so much help there. They say to put the stands "on the sides of the body frame," which sounds like the frame rails. From the drawings, it looks more like the front stands are under the A-arm mounting points and the rear stands are on the rear subframe, which is what I usually do.

See scanned image from '88 FSM:

 

jacking the car from the frame rail often causes it to cave in/dent. i also use the a-arms or front subframe.

 

Alright, thanks everyone!

 

**** putting jack stands on the frame.

 

+1. that's how this **** happens