Jacking from bumper?

Well, it's that time of year again- Fluid film.

That means spending some quality time under the tacoma, and likely taking all four wheels off.

We have two of these fork-lift looking car jacks, and generally with the chevy trucks/suburban we just put one up front and one out back, and jack them right up from the bumper/frame to do this.

With my '99 taco, it had an oversized aluminum flat bed so we never dared jack it from that, and I would jack it directly by the frame to do this, but it's inconvenient.

I'm wondering if I can jack the unmodified 2013 from the front and rear. I did replace the front bumper with a winch bumper, and I think that end is plenty solid... and the rear has the tow hitch so I'm thinking it should be OK back there too- and this would make installing my rock sliders easy too....
BUT I'm not risking it without hearing from someone who has done it before.

 

If you or anyone else is getting underneath it, PLEASE PLEASE put some good jackstands under there properly.

Shit happens

 

I wouldn't do it and I wouldn't recommend anyone else do it either. Those are not meant to support the weight or a jacking point.

 

There is a jack point under the front cross member.
Use stands. Both front and back.

 

I just use (2). 2x8 about a foot long screwed together under each front tire. None on the back. Plenty of room.

 

Use the rear diff housing to jack up the rear, both wheels at the same time, install jack stands. Front you have the factory jack points, the frame rails, or if you know what you are doing and careful the lower control arm on either side. Install jack stands.

 

What all them fellers above me said. Limbs under the vehicle = stands. Life-vital body parts under the vehicle = redundant stands.

 

Um, there is a fine line between brilliance and lunacy ha ha.

 

I use ramps. Chock the wheels. Pull parking brake. Fluid Film everything and then just jack and remove each wheel at a time to finish the job.

 

I jack up each corner individually I never oput a jack on the rear diff to jack up the rear and i put the truck on 6 ton jack stands

 

It took some digging to find what I'm talking about.
https://www.tooldiscounter.com/product/hein-werner-2-1-2-ton-air-operated-end-lift-heihw93696a

His are much older and not air operated, but work a treat.


Fluidfilm completed yesterday, spent a solid six hours under and around the truck.
We jacked with two of these contraptions- rear directly onto the tow package subframe, which had vertical shafts up to the main frame- and front onto the lower bumper mounts which also had vertical shafts up to the main frame. Lowered them down into the nearest "locked" position
Apparently these things used to be very common, we're estimating the ones we have were built sometime before 1950 and they're very sturdy.
Added four jackstands on blocking just in case and went to town.


Some gen2 FF notes!
This truck had been "treated" by toyota with their shmoo, but they didn't do anywhere near a good a job as they should have.
There was quite a bit of the stuff shoved into the box part of the frame under the cab, where those pita plastic caps go- but only for about 36" forward of that point. The next several feet of the front end of the frame were completely untreated, and nothing rear of that point was treated.

Being the first treatment for this truck, I went a little extra. Spent the time under there with an air nozzle to blast out the collected crap after going through a car wash for the underbody spray, then went through the truck end to end covering every square inch of the inside of the frame, every nook and cranny with as much shmoo as I could stand to spray. Then I came back with the shmoo cannon and lathered up every square inch of frame and chassis under the truck.
Finished it out by using the aresol can to get inside the drip edges in the doors- although now I'm thinking I might have forgotten the rear doors.... it's my first extended cab!

This is an extremely messy process so I wasn't about to break out the phone for any photos, but lets just say it's more heavily coated than the photo attached.
Only thing left to do is possibly inside the rear cab doors, and inside all four fenders- when I work out what to do with these newfangled plastic fender covers. Took one off to try and it was a disaster... but that's for another thread.

 

Man, I’m so glad I live in the south where I don’t have to do this. Looks like a pain.