How to Jack Up a Truck

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Nate McCullough on behalf of Expert Village. In the following clips we're going to talk about the correct procedure for replacing your upper and lower ball joints on a two-wheel drive, full sized vehicle. In this clip, we're going to talk about the proper service procedure for jacking your vehicle up off the ground. We'll talk about jack placement and the way to operate your hydraulic floor jack. The hydraulic floor jack actuates right here. That's your pumping lever. As you can see the jack head begins to come up as you work it. This is your release point. Take the screw and pretty much turn the screw and that releases your floor jack. We're going to tighten it up and slip it underneath the vehicle's control arm and jack the vehicle up. The reason why your going to shoot for the vehicle's control arm is that it'll take out all of the travel that your suspension has built in to it. It'll save you a whole bunch of jacking time if you do it this way as opposed to using the frame of the vehicle. You'll know you have it high enough when you wheel free spins. We're not quite there yet. Right there. Ok, right here is the vehicle's control arm assembly and as you can see I have my jack located on the center of it, right underneath the shock absorber. This is a good point to go ahead and locate your jack. You can feel free to put all the pressure there that you need to, to get the tire off the ground. As you can see, I've placed my jack stand under a very sturdy portion of the vehicle. I had to adjust it up a little bit. Jack stands are adjustable up to approximately a foot. So what we did is place our jack stand and then let the tension off of our floor jack by using the adjusting screw and let the vehicle settle down onto the receiving cup of our jack stand. That is the proper procedure for placing and jacking up the suspension of your vehicle."