Just a quick reminder to all my FEP friends to stay safe while wrenching. Jacks fail. Stands fail. Use many properly secured and block the wheels too!
Today my 19 year old son had a flat on my 2008 Lincoln MarkLT. He followed the jacking instructions in the manual as much as he possibly could while not being somewhere with a lot of resources, and ended up turning the factory jack into a horse shoe as the truck narrowly missed him when the jack failed and it came down.
What the Ford/Lincoln instructions manual says to do is put the jack on the front leaf spring perch with the base going length ways in the same direction of vehicle travel then jack from the rear with the long crank handle supplied. They also say block the wheels, but he didn't have anything readily available to do so.
He put it in 4WD and park and crossed his fingers.
Well -- the vehicle apparently wanted to roll once the flat tire was in the air with enough force that the jack was no match for it. It turned the screw on the jack into a U shape and slammed the truck down on the brake rotor.
What I always do when jacking a vehicle is block the wheels and put the jack in perpendicular to the direction of travel. The blocks hold it in front/back motion and the tire across from the flat and the screw jack rod hold it side-to-side. Fortunately I've never had a jack do when happened to my son.
I have had a 5 ton jackstand fold in on itself and had my 1986GT fall within seconds after I got out from under it before while replacing a motor mount though..... (my safety back -- my jack - was lifting the motor to replace the mount so there was no backup to the stand at the time)
2nd generation that somehow didn't get hurt, thank god. I remember all too well that scared the crap out of ya type feeling that my son experienced today.
Any day our family and ourselves are still safe and with is is a blessing. The rest of the crap can be replaced..... Very thankful to still have a son to say the least.
He wasn't lucky. Lucky would have been no flat tire. But he was fortunate. Fortunate to walk away after the incident alive and in one piece. And able to go buy another jack and finish the job.
I think I'll do the little stuff I need to do today and stay the hell at home from there.
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