I always wondered this since I noticed that a lot of cars always have at least some damage to their pinch weld jack points, usually from hydraulic jacks, lack of adapters, or dropping the car onto jack stands hard. I get it not everyone has the right equipment or experience but it also seems like a poor and cheap design from the manufacturers. Why hasn’t there been a method or aftermarket product that kinda bulks up the pinch welds. Hell I don’t think I ever seen someone even weld or bolt on some steel to kind of guard the pinch welds from bending. Is there a reason for that, like structurally? Why are those hockey puck looking adapters the norm, just because its easier?
Tldr: Many vehicles suffer damage to their pinch weld jacking points from improper use of jacks, prompting the question of why there isn’t a robust aftermarket solution or protective design from manufacturers to prevent this issue, besides those hockey puck looking adapters?
They make jack adapters for this exact reason. I’ve seen them for lifts as well.
I drive a hot hatch and purchased aftermarket jacking rails for it. The rails are two long pieces of steel that I bolted underneath the car to distribute weight. I can jack the car up from anywhere along those rails.
Alternatively there are also jack pads you can buy for pinch welds. It’s just a block that you set on top of your jack. As you raise it to the point of the pinch welds, the jack pads surrounds it and helps distribute weight and support the car better.
I get it not everyone has the … experience
This is really what it boils down to. I never had this issue as a mechanic, but I didn’t generally use pinch welds as a jack point. Most vehicles have numerous options for using a floor jack. You could use a control arm, or cross member, or sometimes a drivetrain component. Additionally, sometimes the pinch weld has a designated spot for jacking that seems to be reinforced.
Maybe what you are saying only applies to newer vehicles and I am out of date. Totally possible! I did not experience this 10+ years ago, tho. Only on exceptionally rusty cars that the driver would be challenged to install thr spare on the side of the road.
A couple companies make them like TunerRack but I think the biggest issue is that it’s no longer compatible with the scissor jack. A couple other issues are that the ones that use grub screws to pinch the welds can come off if the grub screws back out from vibration, and the kinds that require drilling sometimes develop obnoxious rattle if they wind up having play.
But the most unintended outcome of all this is usually those things are nice shiny anodized bits, so people tend to still use pads, which kind of defeats the purpose
I can’t remember what they are called, but I’ve seen what looks like round pieces of dense rubber with a slit for the pinch weld to sit in.
