Jacking points?

[RUM4MO]

Veteran, yes, the limit of drop would be controlled by bump stops unless they got torn and escaped.

Peugeot and Ford as far as cars we get in UK seemed to be the worse offenders of ending up with the spring tilted over and digging into the front tyre - but that view only comes from my exposure to that sort of thing from friends.

It probably depends on what style of road springs are used in the front suspension, most manufacturers have binned linear springs but they should end up being the safest due to no change in diameter over their length. My VW Passat front spring would have be tapered top and bottom, so when the bottom small coil(s) snapped off, the spring just rode down over the lower spring platform luckily avoiding any brake pipes in its way and came to rest on a front drive shaft when turning in one direction - focuses the mind when you are in heavy fast traffic!

[RUM4MO]

Whoops, another occurrence to back up Pug's liking to attack the tyre sidewall!

Edit:- I am/have/was hoping that by buying replacement road springs from a proper steel and spring manufacturer would reduce this happening, but when I deliberately bought springs made by Lesjofors, I found that they started rusting quite quickly - which annoyed me a bit!

As I intend to keep my wife's 2015 Polo for an least 8 years, I know that I will need to replace its springs at some point, I'll still try to source Lesjosors hoping that the steel they buy in and treat is of better quality and so will resist this micro fracturing for longer, I do tend to try to keep rust at bay on all the road springs when servicing the brakes, I feel that by keeping the areas that you can see intact, you will be minimising the risk of a spring breaking at half height.

VW Group were meant to be slowly changing over to composite materials for road springs, but I'd think that even with composite materials, if you got any nicks on the outer coatings, it would travel with time and cause failure. I think that A1 or maybe just S1 was initially mentioned for using these new springs on.

[veteran]

Jeez! This is all quite worrying. Coilsprings years ago didn't break as often as this, I'm pretty sure. And as for Peugeots, the neighbour of mine who runs an expensive Audi also has a secondhand Peugeot van (2009 reg) that he bought about 5 years ago. He's away at the moment but I remember him telling me a while back that during the first year of him owning it one of its coilsprings broke. He'd not noticed it and it got picked up on during an MOT. So yes, Peugeot again. I'll quiz him about it when he's back from his séjourn. My locality of SW London is a veritable assault course for cars, with tall roadhumps just about everywhere.

Is it perhaps always advantageous, from the coil failure point of view, in having full MacPherson struts, ie. all four corners operating on coaxial springs and dampers? Only the fronts on my Polo are true MacPhersons.

As for you planning to replace your wife's Polo's coilsprings within the first eight years, RUM4MO, well, knowing how diligent and safety-conscious you are, I can see that by the time those eight years are up you'll have replaced just about everything else on the car as well! That's not me being facetious, just an observation. But I have to agree that the integrity of the coilsprings is pretty damned important, so I guess you have a point. Certainly, your comments, and those from others on the matter of coilsprings, is changing my opinion of present-day coilsprings.

Maybe Lotusflower94's thought about possibly getting rid of his/her Polo because of too sloppy a ride has some foundation? I must say that, compared to the springs I had on my old Mk3 Golf, those on my current Polo are paramount to a set of recycled bedsprings!

I'll be interested to hear if there've been any technical papers written on this subject in recent years, eg. by the Road Research Lab or by other european or american vehicle safety institutions.

[RUM4MO]

Me replacing all the springs on my wife's 2015 will not be a planned preventative bit of work, it will only happen when the springs have snapped.

I'm not convinced that having shocker inside spring brings with it any safety benefits over shocker and spring when springs snap.

Springs, well at least the front springs break "twice", some corrosion weakens a specific area of the spring and the coil cracks unnoticed maybe 1/8>1/3 of the way through, then sometime later total failure occurs, that is what I have concluded from examining the freshly snapped front spring from the 2002 Polo and the late 2009 Ibiza, though in the Ibiza's case I had to retrace my steps to collect the snapped off bottom section! Both times a slightly rusted slopping/tapered section of the break, followed by a step across the cross section which was the final failure point. I felt that I needed to quickly find what had happened to the Ibiza as we were only 2 or 3 miles from home and on the way to airport parking, so that I knew if it was sensible to continue or return home to change the car's details and grab another car.

As this is mainly not an issue for newish cars, no one is going to be interested in statistics, only fleet operators bother about that sort of thing and so can influence car makers and car safety watchdogs. Newish cars is a term I am using for cars within new car warranty.

[cheba]

Are the Audi TT jacking points really suitable for use with a floor jack?

I remember first reading about them for the first time a few years back, and multiple sources stated that they are only suitable for use with a 4 point lift (I remember one source even stating that they were intended only for lifting in the factory during the manufacturing process). The reason given was that the material around the mounting holes is too weak to withstand non-balanced lifting (as opposed to balanced lifting with a 4-point lift) without deforming.

[RUM4MO]

On all versions of Polo/Ibiza/Fabia/A2/A1 they are okay for this use, lots of people fit them to Golf/Leon/Octavia/A3 but I would think that that must be as near the weight limit for these areas of the body as you could go, it has been reported that when fitted to B5 Passats there can be local frame deformation probably at the front only - which does not surprise me and I'd never considered fitting them to my old B5 Passat.

My trolley jacks are Sealey 2 Tonne long frame and they have a small lifting cup so these protectors fit into the cups perfectly, maybe if your trolley jack was a bigger cup it would not be quite so snug a fit.

I'll stick my neck out and say that these protectors were never ever considered to be suitable for use with the usual workshop lifter, workshops will always use the folded welded areas for lifting on all these VW Group cars and some other cars.

Due to the fact that most if not all VW Group cars have these holes in the same or similar positions, I'd agree that they are probably used on the assembly line for lifting/moving bodies about.

Edit:- I think that these jacking protectors have appeared in the VW Group world due to some cars being fitted with under covers which removes the scope for finding somewhere suitable to jack up a car, or to support a raised car - so specific jacking/supporting points are getting provided - this does not apply to the Polo at least up to the 6C version yet, though the side under covers does keep you away from most of the under body areas - and that is where the option of fitting into place a set of jacking point protectors comes into its own. For me, in my time of lifting cars prior to having a couple of sets of Jackpoint jack stands, I could quite easily see the advantage in being able to just wheel a trolley jack up to my wife's Polo and locate it below a protector and jack that point up, no messing about with maybe bespoke wooden spreader blocks and getting them into exactly the correct position and the trolley jack below the centre of these blocks - it was like night and day jacking up her Polo after it was fitted with protectors compared with messing about with blocks under my Passat.

[spartacus68]

So here's it is. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vehicle-Pinc ... SwHnFVzxaP

This is not a conventional jack pad. I've bought from this seller a few times. The jack pad is quality, made in Slovakia, reinforced rubber and crucially comes with a deep slot, so it won't split when its used. Combined with a 2 or 3-tonne Arcan trolley jack (available from Costco) it really is great combination.

I've used this on My A4 Allroad (and its no lightweight) and it lifts it fine.

Speaking of damaged coil-springs I've lost count of the number of repairs I've done on cars over the years. The composite material is key, but importantly, especially on front suspension is if a rotating strut bearing is on the way out. Repaired my wife's Audi A2 more times than I care to remember as the bearing seizes with corrosion. Tell tale signs are a 'twang' sound on turning as the coil struggles to rotate in the strut. Did a Skoda Fabia a few months ago before swapping to the Polo and regularly used to do them on my old A4 Quattro 2.5 TDI V6 (rear) as I used to tow.

The coils are powder coated in the factory. This very thin layer of paint is all that stops corrosion setting in. Think about the average Scottish winter, pot holes, speed bumps and other forces, and you can see why they they don't last.

[wolfie]

Well another little irritation I've come across. I thought while I'm "in the zone" so to speak, I'd have a look at little set of ramps. Now, even though the Polo by todays standards is not a large car, the Tsi has 215/45 tyres as standard so they are reasonably wide. I gave an old set away about 20 years or more ago when I reached the point where I was driving newer cars. I knew I should have listened to my inner Magpie at the time.

A quick "Google" throws up a fair few sets of ramps (most of which are clones of each other) however even the ones tagged as "extra-wide" only appear to go to 185. There are a few wide variants that come in molded plastic, but I can't say I've ever seen a pair in the flesh. What are folk using, if anything?

[RUM4MO]

I'd think that you made a wise move getting rid of older ramps as they were all very narrow as were tyres at that time.

I and others have made up their own ramps using in my case, a length of seriously thick marine plywood which is currently wide enough for all my cars up to the 2011 S4, and I can't see car tyres getting much wider.

There are a few wide plastic ramps out there, though that is just what I've noticed from casual interest, as well as some modular ramps that can, if you want just leave you with the car up on four "tables" once you have removed the ramp sections.

Edit:- by the way, I also moved my old steel ramps on in recent years, to the scrap metal part of the local tip.

[veteran]

Getting back to the original topic of the appropriate jacking points and the use of the cill seam for that purpose, in the last few days I've seen presumed official VW lifting advice that strongly suggests that those four 6-inch strengthened portions of seam on the car are indeed not only meant for the driver's usage when wheel-changing (using the wind-up jack that comes with the vehicle) but also for supporting the car when a workshop 'lifting platform', or even a trolleyjack, is used. So maybe it is legitimate for garage workshops to use those seams? But of course only on those strengthened 6-inch portions. If you look carefully at that part of the seam you'll perhaps see that the lowest edge is in fact turned over a tad, making it less like a cutting edge. Or at least, that's how it is on my 6C.

I would still advocate some sort of compliant buffer material being used between the jacking device and the seam, though, if only to limit the amount of inevitable mechanical and paintwork damage imparted to the seam and the surrounding cill. If you want to see just how bad some of this damage can amount to over the years on some vehicles (and here I'm not necessarily meaning VW Polos but just cars in general), go to YouTube and search for "Craig's DIY Car", where he describes his use of a set of replacement buffers for his pawl-type jackstands used for this purpose. For an odd moment, he mentions and shows the mangled mess that are his cill seam lifting points. You'll cringe.

Something else that might be of interest to some of you here is that the german firm BPR Systems GmbH has recently put on the market a series of uprated, grooved jack pads for use with trolleyjacks and pawl jacks. These are called Planger Steady Pads/Power Pads, and are made from really tough rubber. Unlike the Audi TT jackpads some of us have already mentioned, these are not for fitting permanently to the car, to pre-formed holes inboard of those cill sections, so if you had a pair of them for example you could take them along with you when your Polo were MOT'd, if you felt the tester's lifting gear would otherwise damage your cill seams. That said, I think that some of the more-enlightened MOT testing stations may now use grooved rubber pads with their lifting gear, so maybe the message about this is finally getting through? For your own use, you could just lay them on the working head of your trolleyjack, align the jack under the seam (strengthened section only, of course), then raise the jack, allowing the seam to locate in the groove. The pad's sides would also partially support the cill itself. As I found in my trial last year of one of the earlier incarnations of this Steady/Power Pad, there'll be some considerable compressing of the groove by the weight of the car, but these uprated ones are now thicker. You'll see these Planger pads advertised on Amazon, and presumably also on eBay, for around 9 GBP, depending on their profiles. Do remember that trolleyjack heads vary in diameter with the jack's specification.

With the Audi TT-type permanently-fitted pads, I'd recommend you also use the ECS adaptor plate. You lay the adaptor into the trolleyjack's head, and it locates into the Audi TT pad when you raise the trolleyjack and makes for a more secure seating and a bit more load-spreading.

[RUM4MO]

I'd be checking very carefully what the width and depth of the groove is in any rubber pads you buy, I made the width as narrow as possible for the first set of adaptors that I made for my 2011 S4, it suited it perfectly, also suit the 2002 Polo and the late 2009 Ibiza all without causing any damage to the car's coatings, but, when used on my wife's 2015 6C Polo one lifting point ended up with the stone protection covering getting cut and used out of the way - due to the adaptors not being wide enough at that point, which was on the front only. The next set that I made all had a wider groove/slot in them to avoid that being repeated, this next set I only use on higher cars as their basic ground clearance is roughly 40mm more than the S4.

[wolfie]

I was thinking of fabricating myself a wooden block to sit under the pinch welds. There are tons of various versions of grooved jack-pads to be had, with various different profiles for the groove, with differing materials ranging from rubber to the classic "Hockey-puck" hard material. What doesn't appear to vary much is the width of the pad. Most appear to be 75mm or considerably less.

Now, to my thinking the stresses placed on the pinch weld will be considerable and the narrower the point you are lifting on the worse it becomes. I was thinking of fabricating something that would fit beneath the whole of the width of he strengthened section to spread the load as much as possible. Also possibly using a softer rubber sheet between the block and the lifting edge to protect the stone-chip/paint finish.

[veteran]

RUM4MO, I know exactly what you mean by these sorts of rubber/plastic-based v-grooved pads stripping away the protective covering on the surrounding cills-proper. When last year I experimented with one or two different types/brands, including what was then called a Planger Steady Pad, I relented from allowing the weight of the car on that particular corner to compress the pad any further when I began to see that happen. In fact, some of these pads have grip pimples and other raised markings, including names, moulded into their tops and these can dig into the soft protective covering of the cill, as the pad deforms under the weight of the car. The extent to which that happens will depend on several different things, not least the overall size of the pad and its hardness rating and therefore its compressibility and degree of collapse but, as you say, the profile of the groove is very important. Personally, for the new type of flat, grooved Planger pad now on the market, or even the old one for that matter, I wouldn't normally choose to use it on my Polo's cill seam, for fear of that stripping action happening. I'd instead use my fitted AudiTT pads, which end up inboard and away from the cill seams. Others may take a different view, though. Incidentally, with the Planger pad held in a vice you could probably remove the pimples and other moulded-in grip marks with a stout file. I guess BPR Systems GmbH produces these Planger pads for 'the average car' and with just one or two ratings of trolleyjacks in mind, and therefore they're only going to be 100% successful on some.

Wolfie, I'd be very surprised if you could fashion a manageable block of wood into which you've cut an appropriate v-groove that'd withstand longterm the weight imparted by the car. Even using the densest wood you could get hold of, and taking into account the direction of its grain, I think that very soon it'd split down the groove, and then you'd probably have a disaster on your hands. Making the block longer, to stretch along the full length of the 6 inches of strengthened seam would help but I think you'd end up with something that'd be quite big and unwieldy and probably still prone to splitting. Soft rubber sheet as an addition? Well, that too would help, but the combo of wood, sheet and trolleyjack would be one heck of a faff, wouldn't it, with an inordinate amount of time required to line everything up, and with everything securely balanced?

Thus far, I see the AudiTT jackpads as being the best solution. But the jury is still out, I think, on whether they are wholly appropriate for the Polo, as the area immediately around the front floorpan holes on the Polo doesn't look particularly strong. The rear holes are less questionable. Before I bought my own AudiTT jackpads from PSI Tuning, I asked them in an e-mail whether the pads were likely to be used when the car was MOT'd. The answer was No, implying that the tester would instead ignore them and raise the car on the cill seams instead. In retrospect, that makes me wonder if, in the end, the cill seams (the strengthened sections) on these VAG Group vehicles prove to be stronger and less deforming than the areas around the holes into which the AudiTT jackpads are fitted. Or maybe it's just plain cussedness on the part of the MOT tester?

[RUM4MO]

I'd think that sill folded welded sections tend to be a popular standard and so all standard lifting gear uses these areas, okay some marques had bespoke locating holes for dealership pegs to engage in, or even rectangular cutouts for same sort of engagement of lifting gear, but most times, if AA or RAC attended a puncture at the side of a road, its their 3 or 4 Tonne trolley jack that will get dragged out and pushed under the sill lifting points.

Remember when I am using my Jackstands that I've modified to extend the load bearing area, I am making sure that the car's weight is being taken by the section of body just inboard and just outboard of the vertical folded welded part, that part I only use for stabilising, locating the jack stand.

Against my better judgement I crawled under the Polo tonight as some of the under cover screws holes were not lining up with the holes in the under cover, I survived!

Edit:- the section of my brain that covers Rage activities took priority over the section that covers common sense!

[wolfie]

I hear what you're saying about the likelihood of the wooden blocks splitting. That said folk have been using wooden blocks for lifting, chocking and protecting parts for hundreds of years before we had the fancy new plastics and rubber.

It's all fancifull and in my head for the moment, if I start having a play and it looks like a non-starter it will get binned off. Chances are in the fullness of time I will be going down the "TT-insert" path. But as a better than nothing fix, I was thinking about using 3 layers of 18mm ply, laminated (glue & screw) up into a block of about of about (150 x 100 x 60) ish. With a slot ripped into it wide enough to accept the pinch-weld and some soft rubber. (I've seen a few people using microfibre cloths, that appear to work well) If it does the trick I'd just glue/stick it in place to get rid of some of the faffing about and having the protection fall off.

I think the the vast majority of folk never give it a second thought, just sticking the jack under or even simply using the jack provided with car never considering "what if it goes wrong!" or damage to the underside of the vehicle.

If the weather stays good, I'll make some in-roads into servicing the today.