OT: Under-car access options

No - turning upside down has all sorts of issues, mostly with the many fluids.

Cool but costly.

Simple - watch out for pooling of petrol fumes (= bang!)

There was some discussion of this on a Hyundai forum (getting a Tucson next year) and the new plastic ramps had good press from some of the uses for being inexpensive (compared to above, by Halfords ramp standards they are expensive), practical and pretty safe in use.

If it's for your own car once a year, I'd go with the ramps plus a good hydraulic jack and 2 properly strong axle stands.

If you're planning on doing lots of work, a long pit makes sense and is still simple and inherently safe (barring petrol leakage).

If you were a mechanic, then obviously a lift makes sense.

I'd be a bit wary of how long plastic ramps will last. Will you get any warning when they go brittle?

Does anyone do jackable ramps? With cars having low clearances, sometimes the angle of the ramp hits skirts. I've seen things like:

Theo

Just plain *daft* in fact. You may as well just use a trolley jack and axle stands. The ramps in the link Tim pointed to don't provide enough lift. I want to be able to at *least* crouch under the vehicle but standing would of course be ideal.

A mate of mine dug one in his garage years ago, we all did quite a lot of work in it since we were all running bangers on a budget.

Main down-side was that it would collect a foot of water over a couple of days. Had to dig an extra sump to facilitate baling.

Easily the best option if you have space and can afford it.

Pits are prone to filling up with water.

money.

And to be incredibly careful about placement.

Guy who used to service our equipment lost a friend who was a foreman in a workshop. Trainee had finished a service, foreman went to check sump plug, and pulled car off lift onto himself. Died instantly :(

The guy who fitted our lights explained why he put the fuse in his pocket when he was working ona circuit ....

Indeed :( Four post are much safer.

Not just me then! One of the down-sides of modern CUs. Taping over the switches helps, but idiots will sometimes interfere.

In industry, you normally padlock off the isolators.

Think by the time you made decently strong jacking ramps with safety locks after they were raised, they might be too heavy to carry. ;-)

Same really applies to ones with a gentle slope to clear all low cars.

You can get padlockable tabs for MCBs too...

I wonder if anyone went to the expense of a lift and then found they didn't have roof height clearance?

Not long after I got my Rover SD1 many years ago, it needed a new steering rack. The car had a 'used' warranty, and that directed me to a steering specialist.

Came back with the bonnet 'bent'. It is a forward hinged type, and the only thing I could think happened is it was jammed on the roof when the car was on the ramp. The body shop had to fit new hinges to get it back to normal.