you use your classic car more successfully, safely and pleasurably

In this video I want to talk about jacking your car up safely

Now what I will say, is if you're jacking your car up or intending to jack your car up

because you've suffered a puncture on the side of the road or on the motorway

then don't. Call out the breakdown. You need to make sure

that you're in a safe place if you're going to do this. The hard shoulder is not a safe place

lay-by's aren't that good either. If that's happenend and you're with Carole Nash Insurance

then you've got inclusive breakdown cover

Here we've got this little Mazda sitting on a bit of a slope

Now what I've done, because the slope comes down this way

I've positioned the car sideways. Now, quite a lot of driveways have a slope to them

Firstly what I'm going to do; a piece of wood, real life situation. Get that underneath the back of the rear tyre

And the little bit, just get that and wedge it in there.

So now, I'm going to put the handbrake on, because we're jacking it up at the front

I don't need the wheel to spin. Now before I jack it up, what I need to do firstly is make sure

that I've released the wheel nut. Because if I jack it up and I haven't released the wheel nut - released the

tension on them. Then, of course, what will happen when I try to undo them? The wheel's just going to spin

So that's no good

Crack those. There a bit tight. There we are. See I'd have never have done that, if I'd have left the wheel nuts tight

when I jacked the car up

I'm using a jack that came with the car. So it's a Scissor Jack and they're notoriously easy to unbalance

So this actually fits in on to the sill here and what you'll notice, is there's a little point here where the sill is

just that little bit thicker. Put that through there and then, just jack it up

Now here, I have one of the most important bit of equipment you could have; it's an axle stand

So, it's a bit of a tall one, but what I need to do is find a place where I can get it underneath this car

so I can then let the car down on to the stand, which will then take the place of the wheel essentially

Okay, so I'm going to put that there. Just lower it down, just slightly. I'm leaving the jack in there

It's gone up a bit higher than I'd have liked but I know that the stand is under there

So, we can now proceed to take the wheel off or do whatever it is that we need to do

And that is how to jack your car up safely!