Whenever doing actual work on vehicles I've owned, I've often depended on being able to place a floor jack centrally under the front or rear of the car and lift the entire front or rear at once so as to be able to place jackstands conveniently and not have the car's frame sitting at weird angles. I'm used to it being easy, too - on a Crown Vic there's a massive frame crosspiece up front and the pumpkin in the rear; on a Cavalier there's the radiator support up front and the L-beam welded between the suspension trailing arms in the rear.
On the Five, though, I'm a bit confused. There's all this plastic shrouding up front, with no metal structural bits exposed forward of the front wheels, leading me to conclude that I've got to somehow get the jack underneath the exposed rear part of the front subframe, which I don't think I can do with my current jack anyway because I selected it for getting big cars at least 24" in the air and it scarcely goes low enough to fit underneath all the low-hanging cosmetic and aerodynamic bits on the Five. But at least I can conceive of a way to do it up front. On the rear, I'm completely clueless. Does the IRS arrangement even have something in the middle that I can slide a jack under to get the tail in the air at one go?
On the Five, though, I'm a bit confused. There's all this plastic shrouding up front, with no metal structural bits exposed forward of the front wheels, leading me to conclude that I've got to somehow get the jack underneath the exposed rear part of the front subframe, which I don't think I can do with my current jack anyway because I selected it for getting big cars at least 24" in the air and it scarcely goes low enough to fit underneath all the low-hanging cosmetic and aerodynamic bits on the Five. But at least I can conceive of a way to do it up front. On the rear, I'm completely clueless. Does the IRS arrangement even have something in the middle that I can slide a jack under to get the tail in the air at one go?
