Most FWD or even your AWD vehicle can probably be safely jacked up on one side.
Figure the weigh distribution is about 60/40 biased to the front. If you place the jack just behind the mirror, I suspect you'll end up with that entire side of the car off the ground.
For my cars with directional tires, I do just that. I break all the lug nuts free while the car is on the ground, pick my estimated center of gravity point, grab my hockey puck I use to keep from scratching the bottom of the vehicle and raise the vehicle with the 3ton trolley jack.
I pull the tire assemblies, inspect, and then rotate them to their new location, attaching the lug nuts until they bottom out on the wheel, not yet to torque.
I lower the car, and repeat for the other side. Then, a lap around the car with a torque wrench and in the case of alloy wheels, a lap around the car the next day after it's been driven 50+ miles.
For non-unidirectional tires, I raise the front, put it on jack stands, pull the front wheels, and do each rear corner one at a time.
Rears go straight ahead and fronts get swapped to the opposite corner.
Same drill with tightening and torque wrench when all done.
I could probably optimize this a bit by just using one jack stand, say on the passenger front, and then using the jack on the drivers side at the CG point, raise that side, mounting the just pulled passenger front on the drivers rear, moving up the drivers rear and taking the drivers front to the passenger rear, ready for the next step.
Not sure it's really worth that level of optimization, but I may try it to see if I can take out one jack stand and jacking operation.
Originally Posted By: PeterGreen
I need to rotate the tires on my car, an Acura TL with Sh-Awd, which has about 11000 on it. All of the rims are in their original factory positions.
The question is how do I go about doing this myself. The factory Michelins are directional, I believe, and I want to go front to rear and vice versa. If I jack up the rear of the car in the center, I can put jack stands under the two rear jacking points, under the rear doors, but then what? Do I jack up the front? Do I need four wheel stands? Is it safe to jack the front when the car is sitting on two jack stands?
An alternate method would be to use the factory spare, which is a donut, take off one tire at a time. Question is if the donut's diameter is considerably smaller than the factory rims, which are 18 inchers with 45 profile tires, can I safely jack up the car when there is a donut on the other end, or will the car be too low to jack high enough to get the standard rim off?
I realize I could just pay a tire place to do this for $30 but then I have to worry that they will overtorque the lug nuts.
Any suggestions for a plan of action?
