Wood cribbing

I've made cribbing before.it's kinda tedious but they're nice to use.very stable,no straps required.i used a cordless driver to to run the screws in.made a big difference.

The length and width will depend on how much wood you have and how wide you want them to be. Big giant stands will be heavier and take up space.

I have a 16" set. Keep the diameter of your tires in mind when you decide on a size. A few nails or 2 3" screws in each of each piece is enough.

I made a set for myself last year. There are videos on YouTube that will give you tips and ideas on how to build them. They're pretty handy. Especially if, as you say, you need to do things on a car at ride height.

Great now the forum is listening to me too. I was just looking into doing this over the past weekend.

08Malibu said:

Great now the forum is listening to me too. I was just looking into doing this over the past weekend.

Click to expand...

Oh don't worry your device is ALWAYS listening😄cue dramatic music.

We made & use 2 sets @ the shop in addition to the old school metal ramps. Very handy.

Don't go too high. Once you start going higher, jacking the vehicle w/a floor jack starts getting sketchy & requires some additional consideration.

Hit up the local Home Depot or indie hardware store and score around a dozen or so construction grade 2 x 4's. As to the length, for mine I went with 10 footers and allowed about an 1/8th" for loss due to the saw blade thickness when doing the cuts for the various lengths. Seem to recall going two feet on the inside and outside rails and between 16-18 inches for the cross bars. Used #8 x 2-1/2 inch FH deck screws to assemble them. Just laid the crosses flat on top of the rails and used a carpenters square to make sure they were at right angles to each other and ran the screws home. Lather, rinse, repeat, total of 28 times to get 4 stacks of cribbing 7 layers high, works out to around 21 inches of vertical lift. it was enough that I could set a transmission on my floor jack and slide it under the van to do the t-box swap a couple of years ago. High enough that I could actually sit under the van and have comfortable access to the work site without having to do the funky worm.

The width on the cross bars was achieved by measuring the width of the tires and adding around 8 inches to that to allow for the bars to land completely on the rails so you can tweak the measurements to work with whatever width tires you have on your ride.


Nick

This is something new to me. I normally use cement blocks. But I like the idea of the tires being locked in place so they can't move. Smart! Thanks guys, like I needed another project.

The only thing I might further suggest is that, if you want to ensure that the layers of your crib stack stay in position, you could either go with a vertical slat, a length of 2x4 and screw one of them to each end of the stack as a rib or brace, or you can prestack the number of layers of cribbing you plan to use and then clamp the stack together so that you use a 1/2 inch drill motor and a 1/2" dia auger bit to drill down through the corners where the rails and crosses overlap. After that you slip a length of 1/2 rebar into the set of holes and the whole stack will stay as laid. The alt to that is to go with all thread, get 4 lengths of 3' x1/2" coarse thread, cut them to length and use nuts and flats to do the securing.

For myself, I prefer the 2 x 4 vertical braces because you can locate them either on the ends of the cribs or on the sides. If you go with the end, leave a little extra and you can build a bump stop so that even if you are on a slight slope, the wheels can't roll off the stack. Had that try to happen to me in the front drive which is sloped to drain water. Added two vertical ribs on the low end to lock the layers together and then slipped in a 2 x 6 (2 x 8) as a chock block for the wheel to keep it in place. A few more deck screws to hold it all together and I was able to slide under the van to replace the rear driveshaft cross bearing. If you are really worried about shift or slip, then put one layer of cribbing under each of the front wheels and run a stringer from the front layer to the rear to lock them together.

One other note is that you can actually use the cribs to locate and raise a truck rear end assembly if you just keep stacking layer by layer, one side at a time, using a floor jack to get the room to slip the next layer in. Actually watched a guy to just exactly that with his lifted four by. Got the truck up on jack stands under the frame, pulled the wheels and put in the cribbing to support the rear end, dropped the suspension out, and then layer by layer he removed the cribbing until the rear end was on the ground. Drug the corpse off to the side, went and got another rear end from the salvage yard, and used the cribbing to lift that rear end until it was high enough to rehang the suspension. Put it all back together and drove off. Did it all there out on the front lawn of his rental. Didn't even have a shade tree, just a few stumpy pine bushes.







Nick