I watched the funny scene the other day. My neighbor minivan fell off the jack. It fell hard on its belly when the guy removed the flat tire. It could ended up very bad if somebody got hurt. Luckily just van’s belly had couple of scratches and that was it.
So guess why it fell off the jack?
You guessed it right – the human error. Or I’d call it stupidity in this case. The owner of the minivan did not engage the parking break nor he ensured by any other means that the car would not roll.
The guy was changing one of the front tires of front wheel drive Toyota Sienna. Once the flat tire was off the ground, lugs were removed and he shook the tire the minivan rolled back a little bit, just enough to fell off the jack.
The lesson there for owner was that the differential lets one wheel roll freely once another wheel is off the ground even if transmission is in “P” (Park).
[image credit: wikipedia]
My latest attempt last night looked almost as it should be. Just on one side rubber pad seamed a little bit off. And here is how it looked by this morning. Spring pushed rubber out completely on one side. So I have to compress spring again and try to realign everything. I just wonder what I was doing wrong since I can not get spring in place correctly.
I also wonder if compressors like the one below works on E46 since although they look similar BMW’s one shown in TIS. The one from TIS uses kind of ring adapter to press against upper plate. For some reason it seams like it should compress spring more evenly. Did anybody try such compressors?
Here is screenshot from TIS. The tool is shown assembled for E46 and upper adapter (it is the right one on the picture) is actually a ring. It does not look like anything from kit above could be used like that ring. And without such ring it would be worthless as any other cheap compressor just because there are not enough coils in spring