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OK, I've jacked the car up to do the odd minor job, however up to now I have placed the jack under the pinch-weld, pretty much where the factory jack is suppoed to be positioned. Now I want to have a look at few bits and bobs under the car so was going to place it on some axle stands. Now where are they best postioned. I've had a quick look and there appear to be chassis rails just inboard of the pinch welds at the rear that look suited to the job. (where the rubber grommets fit) For the front it's not quite so obvious.

So where are we jacking so as not to do any damage and be safe peeps?

What you want to get if you don't already have is a jacking pad. Doesn't damage the pinch weld, and used with a 2-tonne trolley jack is a great combination.

Chock the rear wheels, on the level, jack up the car at the front as per jacking points. Place the axle stand as close as you can to the jack. If in doubt, throw the road wheel under there too for security.

Well, way back when I first worked seriously on my wife's 2002 Polo, I just bought a set of Audi TT jacking point protectors, fitted them at the 4 points in the car's frame, created stepped padded adaptors for my 2 sets of 2 axle stands and did it that way.

Nowadays, I have a set of 4 Jackpoint Jack Stands, which double up as lifting adaptors/pads and tops of stools to rest the car on - or if I'm being very lazy and want to live dangerously, I just use the same 2 trolley jacks under the Audi TT jacking point protectors - I like lifting my cars up one side at a time to minimise twisting the frame, so always use 2 trolley jacks, and operate one with each hand!

The strong areas on these cars is only 4>6 inches in length so very little scope for using a trolley jack and axle stands side by side.

spartacus68 wrote:What you want to get if you don't already have is a jacking pad. Doesn't damage the pinch weld, and used with a 2-tonne trolley jack is a great combination.

Chock the rear wheels, on the level, jack up the car at the front as per jacking points. Place the axle stand as close as you can to the jack. If in doubt, throw the road wheel under there too for security.

That's pretty much the technique I've used in the past. I just had a quick peek under the car at the weekend. To my eyes everything looked a little fragile and cramped under the Polo. There is very little in the way of substantial chassis rail that looks like an obvious candidate for a point to lift the car. Much of the underside is covered with the plastic splash-guards and what you can get at doesn't look reinforced to any degree. I'm sure I've been under cars in the past and even found arrows pressed into the chassis that indicate the strong points.

RUM4MO wrote: Sun Jul 07, 2019 10:43 pm Well, way back when I first worked seriously on my wife's 2002 Polo, I just bought a set of Audi TT jacking point protectors, fitted them at the 4 points in the car's frame, created stepped padded adaptors for my 2 sets of 2 axle stands and did it that way.

Nowadays, I have a set of 4 Jackpoint Jack Stands, which double up as lifting adaptors/pads and tops of stools to rest the car on - or if I'm being very lazy and want to live dangerously, I just use the same 2 trolley jacks under the Audi TT jacking point protectors - I like lifting my cars up one side at a time to minimise twisting the frame, so always use 2 trolley jacks, and operate one with each hand!

The strong areas on these cars is only 4>6 inches in length so very little scope for using a trolley jack and axle stands side by side.

I had a quick Google for jack pads at the weekend. Most appear to be nothing more than a bit of stiff rubber with a slot. I have a couple of timber blocks with a suitable groove cut in them. While the timber is obviously weaker, I've cut them longer to cover the whole length of the re-enforced section of the pinch weld.

By chance my mate has just bought a set of Jack-point stands to go under his 911. While they are impressive and a great idea, I just can't justify that amount of spending on something that gets used a couple of times a year. (Can't borrow his either as he's abroad for a couple of months)

Somewhere along the line I've seen some rubber inserts, that you fit into the chassis and leave in place, which seems a good idea. I just can't seem to find any that say they are for the Polo 6R..

Think it's just going to be a case of "steady does it" and be careful. I'm just a little OCD and don't want to damage the underbody protection (Or get squished... )

Here are the part numbers for the jacking points protectors:- Audi TT jacking points protectors 8N0 803 855 + 8N0 804 583 – 4off each you might even be able to get them ordered in via your local VW dealer, I've forgotten which place I used, either Audi or VW.

Jackpoint jack stands:- I bought a slightly used 2011 Audi S4 back in July 2013 and after having a quick look underneath it, I worked out that lifting it was going to be a bit tricky, so after finding these jack stands, designed for use primarily trackside on 911s etc, I found the UK Porker group were running group buys and so that kept the price well down, but still not cheap, I think that that group buy coincided with a special deal being run with the courier, so I think that it only cost £25 a pair to ship to UK, so only £50 for my 2 pairs and delivered within 36 hours to the local receiver - we split the UK group buy to 2 geographical locations to keep costs down, then arranged for collection to individuals. These must be the best equipment I have ever bought for my garage.

By the way, I even bought sheets of protective rubber via ebay for the wooden spreader blocks that I glued to the top of the Jackstand tops to minimise damage - easy for the original use for my S4 but as the 6C Polo sits a bit higher I made up a set of adaptors to fit on top of the original ones and it took a bit of time to get the correct relative heights so that all 4 shared the weight of the Polo - due to the varying heights of the strong areas behind the folded welded sill seams. So in reality I only use the folded seams as locators for all my adaptors.

RUM4MO wrote: Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:51 am Here are the part numbers for the jacking points protectors:- Audi TT jacking points protectors 8N0 803 855 + 8N0 804 583 – 4off each you might even be able to get them ordered in via your local VW dealer, I've forgotten which place I used, either Audi or VW.

Jackpoint jack stands:- I bought a slightly used 2011 Audi S4 back in July 2013 and after having a quick look underneath it, I worked out that lifting it was going to be a bit tricky, so after finding these jack stands, designed for use primarily trackside on 911s etc, I found the UK Porker group were running group buys and so that kept the price well down, but still not cheap, I think that that group buy coincided with a special deal being run with the courier, so I think that it only cost £25 a pair to ship to UK, so only £50 for my 2 pairs and delivered within 36 hours to the local receiver - we split the UK group buy to 2 geographical locations to keep costs down, then arranged for collection to individuals. These must be the best equipment I have ever bought for my garage.

By the way, I even bought sheets of protective rubber via ebay for the wooden spreader blocks that I glued to the top of the Jackstand tops to minimise damage - easy for the original use for my S4 but as the 6C Polo sits a bit higher I made up a set of adaptors to fit on top of the original ones and it took a bit of time to get the correct relative heights so that all 4 shared the weight of the Polo - due to the varying heights of the strong areas behind the folded welded sill seams. So in reality I only use the folded seams as locators for all my adaptors.

Cheers.

Now I'd actually found those Audi jacking points, but wasn't sure that they would fit the Polo? Likewise, great minds and all that, I have some thick rubber sheet in place over my wooden blocks too. My mate is a Porsche nut and he got hold of his jackstands second-hand via a member of a 911UK.com. I say second hand they look brand new to me.

Do they actually use the seams when they place the car on a 4 point lift or are they inboard on the chassis?

This is a matter to which I gave an awful lot of attention and thought last year. That process included buying and experimenting with various types of buffer pads and load-spreaders.

One thing needs to be clarified, I think. The folded seams, which are just inboard of the car's cills, are indeed especially strengthened over a stretch of about six inches but they are intended by Volkswagen as only jacking points for the windup wheeljack that comes with the car, not as garage lifting points for the entire vehicle. They are there for wheel-changing purposes only. What you see as unfortunately standard practise in many garages does not agree with the intended usage of the cill seams. Indeed, it'd be rather absurd to assume that, in the absence of a special adaptor (preferably rubberised and suitably shaped) the full weight of the vehicle - or even one quarter of its weight - could be taken by cill seams that are - as you can plainly see - as thin as almost a knifeblade. It's no surprise therefore that when garages and MOT stations lift the car on them, damage eventually occurs. Yes, the seams will survive a few annual mistreatments of that kind, but in the course of time those seams will ultimately split and allow rust to take hold. More importantly, because the knifeedge will in the end collapse and deform it'll then mean that no longer will the official windup wheeljack fit the seam, so if you get a flat tyre while you're out on the roads and need to change the wheel, you won't be able to do it, not unless you're very lucky as to the particular wheel.

On the Web you'll find many sellers of V-grooved hardened-rubber pads that are claimed to work as cushions or buffers for cill seams on all kinds of cars. Such pads are meant to fit in the heads of trolleyjacks or in stands. I bought and tried a number of them and they all failed to do the job required. Somewhat unsurprisingly, all of them quite rapidly split in two, right through the V, under the enormous weight of the car. Well, think about it - that cill seam acts like a guillotine blade. That could have been utterly disasterous, in some situations. Others merely compressed too much under the load. In the end, I gave up the idea of ever using a V-grooved buffer, or any other buffer for that matter, on the cill seams.

As you say, there's no sign of a strengthened part of the floorpan that's blindingly obvious to the observer, further inboard from those seams. However, if on the fronts you look about 4 inches inboard from where you'd use the windup wheel-changing jack you'll notice a grommeted hole In the floorpan, in the gap between the front undertray and the intermediate undertray. And if you look at the rears, to a similar amount inboard, you'll see again a grommeted hole, this time in a box section (one of two large grommeted holes there). Those front and rear two points, and the same on the other side of the car, are reasonably strong areas of the floorpan and will accept circular 'jackpads' originally made for Audi TTs some years ago, ie. part nos. 8N0 803 855 and 8N0 804 583, as pointed out by RUM4MO. It transpires that, on VAG Group cars generally, the floorpans are made with four such holes incorporated, so that they can be used to retain these virtually made-to-measure permanently-fitted jacking pads for lifting purposes. Where the car owner doesn't use them, the holes are simply left grommeted by the factory. The jackpads referred to are about 2.5 inches diameter and about 0.75 inch thick uncompressed and have a built-in mechanism that locks them into their respective holes. I hasten to point out, however, that these jackpads are primarily intended for use in combination with a trolleyjack, or even two trolleyjacks, although they could, at a pinch, also be employed in other arrangements for lifting the car. They are, however, not intended as a means to allow you to crawl right under the car - at least, not unless you supplement the setup with other failsafe propping.

In terms of robustness, these pads, an american product, have a proven track record. Last year I myself bought a set of four from PSI Tuning of Newcastle Under Lyme ST5 7RH. They have a website psituning.com, but at the last count the jackpads were not easy to find on it. If you visit that website, be persistent searching for them; they were, I vaguely recall, in the VW parts section. Once bought, they were very easy to fit. I also purchased from PSI Tuning a partnering circular metal adaptor made by ECS. This is shaped to locate between the trolleyjack head and the jackpad and gives extra stability. If you yourself buy a set of these Audi jackpads for your Polo, do consider whether you want one, or instead two, ECS adaptors. If you go to YouTube you'll find one or two videos on these pads, from ECS, which will explain all. I now use mine from time to time with my trolleyjack, and it means I can avoid using the car's cills altogether, when lifting to do jobs on the wheelhubs, suspension, or whatever. Instead, the cill seams are reserved for simply on-the-road wheelchanging.

You could, of course, go along to a local Audi dealership and try to buy them there (you'd probably have to get them ordered in), but you might be confronted with some bewildered looks. Same goes for a VW dealer. The VAG dealer won't have the ECS adaptor, though.

Call it unfortunate but I've never had much success putting conventional car stands to use, whether or not they come with any sort of load-spreader. It's always seemed to me that you need to lift each corner of the car an excessive amount to begin to put a stand in place (inboard, not on the cill seams), an amount that exceeds the capabilities of my trolleyjack or of safety considerations. So, some years ago I consigned my stands to the back of the garage and there they've stayed. Most times, to do under-the-car work, my pair of drive-up ramps get used. These have been not only safer to use than stands but also don't harm the floorpan in any way. With the ramps, I can adequately access all but the very middle section of the car's underside.

Hope these comments prove useful to you, and maybe also to some other members in these forums.

I have never actually witnessed these cars up on a lifter at close quarters, but I do suspect that they just support them on the folded weld, from my way of thinking, doing that will break through the paint coat and the stone chip coating below that which will lead to unnecessary corrosion further down the line.

Using the spreaders that I made for my S4, I ended up stripping back some of the stone chip protection and also found that the car sat too low to get the front wheels off and on, so I created a safe extra set of adaptors to lift the Polo maybe 40mm higher than the S4 so that all the wheels are clear off the ground.

I can't think of any good reason why someone in Europe or even UK has not brought to market a sensibly priced support that does what these Jackpoint jack stands does, if they had I would not have bought these more expensive ones.

The guy that owns the company handles all the orders etc, he says that he is a lawyer who started this to improve how he could easily lift his Porsche when out for track days, ie had a problem and engineered a solution! The speed of delivery from USA was crazy, UK based delivery companies could never match that or at that price, all in all a very easy purchase although I was panicking as some people in the group buy were being a bit sloppy over firming up their order and paying - I saw this as my one and only chance of buying these at an almost sensible price and was not willing to let it go west!

As a sort of warning about the safety limitations of drive up ramps, I must say that I have made 2 sets so I can also get my cars up in the air with wheels on, but, I have witnessed just how low a car drops when a road spring breaks, and that worries me enough to consider the better option when working under a car is on stands. Road springs do not give any warning when they snap, and the front springs on my wife's previous 2002 Polo at round about 5 years old, snapped at the half way point and that meant that after it snapped I could not reverse it up my driveway as it was using the engine under cover as a gravel scoop - so they can drop that low!

Informative post thanks. It's reassuring to know other folk have gone through the same hoops to find the best solution. With regards to PSI Tuning, by chance they are only 4-5 miles up the road from me, so I could stick my nose in the door.

That said, now that you kind gentlemen have confirmed that the chassis rails that are just inboard are indeed the intended lifting points I feel happy enough to use them with my trolly-jack and some suitable load spreading blocks and this rubber pads/sheets. I've just got a few bit I'd like to do. I've bitten the bullet and decided to service it myself this year, plus tidy up a few little bits under the car. For the moment I can borrow a set of ramps, but they will probably be my next purchase.

More questions coming shortly regarding tackling a brake fluid change...

The questions of jacking points seem to come up on a few forums. The Seat Leon has a similar thread and inboard jacking points. https://forums.seatcupra.net/index.php? ... st-4786117
I echo the veteran - ditched axle stands a while ago - they sit in the garage loft! Occasionally use my ramps now that I am able to bolt them to the garage floor but will now be a bit more careful having read RUM4MO contribution.

Yes, makes total sense to go along to PSI Tuning in person, if you're nearby and keen on getting the Audi jackpads. Before going along, measure the diameter and depth of the head of your trolleyjack. The jackpads and the ECS adaptor are suitable for pretty well all hydraulically-operated trolleyjacks that are capable of lifting 2 metric tons or more, but take a ruler or tape-measure with you to double-check suitability; I somehow doubt you'd want to carry your trolleyjack in the back of your Polo. BTW, you're unlikely to need any other load-spreading blocks or rubbers. But I'd imagine you'll want to get at least one ECS adaptor-plate, perhaps two, as the ECS adaptor is shaped to locate into the centre of the fitted jackpad and thereby prevents the trolleyjack head from the possibility of ever slipping away from the jackpad.

Do heed what I say, these jackpads and the use of a trolleyjack are not to enable you to crawl right underneath the car. Always supplement the trolleyjack lifting with something else if you've any inclination whatsoever of ever putting your head or any of your limbs (say) beyond the outer confines of the car when doing a job.

Maybe while you're at PSI you could get them to quickly demonstrate how to fit and use the jackpads? Meanwhile, I'd strongly advocate that you watch the ECS videos about them, on YouTube. Do a search in YouTube of something like "Audi jackpads, ECS".

RUM4MO makes a fair point about one possible danger of using car ramps to access the underside of a car such as the Polo, but I have to say that in all the years that I've had and worked on cars I've never once encountered a broken coilspring, let alone had one suddenly break under those particular circumstances. That doesn't of course mean that it'll never happen to me, and especially so when I happen to be under the car, but the probability of precisely that occurring must be pretty remote. Maybe, going back a decade or two, the manufacturing qualities of coilsprings were much better than we put up with nowadays?

Finally, you raise the spectre of a forthcoming brake fluid change. I happen to be planning one myself - the first for this particular car of mine - and I've already done much research on it. At this stage, I'm not sure whether I'll invest in one particular 'pressure bleeder' or instead just revamp the simple one-way valve arrangement I used on my former Mk3 Golf. Incidentally, VW's type 501-14 DOT4 fluid isn't sold by VW dealerships. But Febi does an approved equivalent to it which you can buy via the Web (Amazon or eBay). It's Febi product 23930 and it's definitely the same, as I checked by looking on the nemiga website. I've already used some to bleed the clutch slave cylinder on my Polo. RUM4MO is a seasoned fluid-changer and I'm sure he'll offer you lots of useful advice on doing the brakes. Like me, he feels that the so-called one-man kits on the market still leave something to be desired.

On the topic of road springs breaking, this is a relatively new phenomenon well over last 15 > 20 years and it is here to stay as far as VW Group and M-B cars are concerned and probably many more as the material will be from a similar source on most if not all European built car, the odd inch or so snapping off the rear springs is never much of a concern until MOT time, the fronts loosing coil, only too frequent, I see plenty at the sides of any roads, breaking at the half way point probably not too frequent.

My problem is, that I had never considered that item breaking being a problem, until it happened to one of my cars when it had just passed its 5th birthday - that 2002 Polo lost a piece of a rear spring a few years later, MOT discovered that, my daughter's late 2009 Ibiza (same general platform and parts as Polo 6R/6C) lost a piece of a rear spring by its 3rd MOT, it snapped a front spring at the top in its 7th year, my old 2000 Passat 4Motion broke a front spring in a dangerous way in its 9th year. I was checking the MOT history of a M-B C class coupe that a friend had bought, it looked like it had failed 4 MOTs for a broken front spring. Some models of cars typically send the broken end of a front spring out into the side wall of a tyre with bad results - my 2000 Passat just let the spring and so body drop right down and was riding on a drive shaft and so sitting very low, and that was just the bottom 3/4 coil that snapped off.

When that Polo dropped down low at the front, it was a "light bulb" moment for me and I've planned never to get caught out under a car when that happened - that spring snapped as I was slowly reversing that car out of the garage with only me on board, no sudden impact from pothole or anything, just what gets called micro spotting/pitting from corrosion joining together to weaken a single point.

Crikey, that's scarey. But if coilsprings are that bad these days I wonder why there hasn't been an outcry within the motoring public or the AA or RAC about them, because what's used in car productions now seems to be 'unfit for purpose' and indeed likely to result in the unnecessary deaths of many people. Could it be also that local councils' obsessions with roadhumps are simply adding to this problem?

Hmm, looks like I'll have to start thinking about a means for backing up my ramps when I'm using them.

Would I be correct in saying that the maximum drop that could take place in a static situation like that is the distance between the top of the wheel and the inside top of the wheelarch, or would it depend on just where, on the coilspring, the break happened?

I had a front spring fail on my previous 9N TDi Sport, mine was just turned 6 years old. The way it failed was all but identical to yours. I was just reversing out of the garage and heard a loud "bang" and felt a little nudge. Initially I thought something in the garage had fallen over onto the car. On inspection I noticed there was a little bit of dirt beneath the passenger side front and it was sitting a little lower on the passenger side, though not excessively so. Mine lost the bottom coil.

When chatting to garage I'd dropped it in to, I asked if they get many, he said "dozens!!" over the course of a year, considerably more over the winter months. He put the increase in the number of failures down to the spread of traffic calming bumps (Lots go as they cross them) Also in winter the springs are stiffer from the cold so the odd failure is to be expected.

Anecdotally, a neighbour who lives opposite had a front spring go on his Pug as he locked over to get into his drive. The section that broke off went straight through the wall of his tyre and it blew out there and then. As you can imagine the car dropped almost to the floor on drivers side. It scared him to death. He'd just come home via 10+ miles of dual carriageway with the car at 60-70mph for the most part. Had it gone 5 minutes earlier it could have been a disaster.