Winterizing - getting tires off the ground
What's the best way to get your tires off of the ground when winterizing? I'm looking at Hosspads or some other jack stand. Does wood work? Is it necessary when parking on blacktop?
Forum Discussion
I left our RV up on jacks for 6 months in storage as we live in Europe and could not check it. Two reasons - one if the tyre pressure went down it could damage a tyre with the subsequent cost. Cost of one tyre is the cost of the jacks! Secondly unsure about this "flat spotting" people go on about with all the weight on the tyres (vehicle is kept fully loaded as we have no home to unload to here). Good to hear someone has said it is a "old wives tale" on GoodSam blog as never seen this a problem on cars.
What I did was jack the vehicle up so tyres are just touching the ground, but have no weight on. It does not risk it "falling off" the jacks and moving then. Jack stands are expensive/heavy and huge and we would need to move them to any new storage location with us. The solution I used was buying 5 hydraulic bottle lift jacks, using 1 for lifting and then placing a jack underneath just with its screw up to the correct height, which required placing wood under it. You must NOT leave it with the hydraulic ram extended as in time it will go back down due to normal small leakage past seals. Then I removed the extra jack and used it again for the next location. All 5 jacks store very nicely under my front left bench seat. Also then available for a tire change!
use the link address in my last post for photos- I can not get a post to work with the link icon :(
What I did was jack the vehicle up so tyres are just touching the ground, but have no weight on. It does not risk it "falling off" the jacks and moving then. Jack stands are expensive/heavy and huge and we would need to move them to any new storage location with us. The solution I used was buying 5 hydraulic bottle lift jacks, using 1 for lifting and then placing a jack underneath just with its screw up to the correct height, which required placing wood under it. You must NOT leave it with the hydraulic ram extended as in time it will go back down due to normal small leakage past seals. Then I removed the extra jack and used it again for the next location. All 5 jacks store very nicely under my front left bench seat. Also then available for a tire change!
use the link address in my last post for photos- I can not get a post to work with the link icon :(
