Redd

"Does the Q5/SQ5 have these circular lift indents as well? "
No, that "cup" design is inferior technology used by BMW, Audi sets a higher standard.
(G)

Personally I can't think of a better way to locate and capture a jack, than to put a pipe cap [sic] at the jacking point, and let the top of the jack line up inside of it. This business of straddling the seam just begs for damage in the field.

ex-quattro PETE

Doesn't the factory jack straddle the seam? I haven't looked at it yet...

Coolieman1220

yes. the seam was designed for this.

HZ60

This thread made me curious about the correct way to lift the Q. I've been both to the dealer and the tire shop where it was put it up on a lift. The lifts had flat steel pads with rubber on top. They put the pads directly on the edge of the pinch welds and lifted the whole car that way. I figured that was the way to do it so I made an adapter out of a piece of square steel with some rubber attached that fit nicely between the tabs on my floor jack saddle.



This seemed to work but after seeing some of the adapters out there, I'm wondering if lifting right on the pinch weld is the right way. I took out the factory jack to see how it is designed



The saddle is actually higher on the inner side unlike the metal adapters or grooved hockey pucks which are level across the top and would put pressure on both sides of the pinch weld but not on the weld itself. I put the factory jack into position and took a few pics. The OEM jack is clearly designed to lift only on the inside of the pinch weld. The outer edge and the bottom of the saddle don't touch anything.

Outer edge


Inner edge


Pinch weld


My home made adapter is obviously not a good solution and could cause damage to the weld if it's not designed to hold all that weight. The OEM jack is a real PITA and I don't trust it at all. Has anyone seen an adapter with offset sides like the OEM saddle. It seems like a bunch of people have had good luck with the hockey puck so maybe either that or one of the slotted neoprene blocks is the way to go?

DimaA6_ABC_Kiev

I'm thinking about cutting a slit in square steel pipe (like you showed) so that pinch weld would go into that slit and 2 parts of upper side of the steel profile will hold the car weight, not the weld itself which I want to avoid as it is definitely not designed to hold any weight - I think its role is to hold OEM jack from slipping and car from falling. Then I will glue some rubber on both parts of the cut top side (just like you did, but in 2 parts) and voila - no metal to metal, no pressure on pinch weld. Will try in April, when it will be a time to change to summer wheels.

hilld

My scissor lift uses rubber blocks between the platform and the pinch welds, but it does lift the vehicle on the pinch weld.

If you look past the lug nuts sitting on the platform, you will see the rubber block. It is about 3" x 6" and 1.5" tall.

Redd

AFAIK lifting ON the pinch welds is never advised. They have no lateral strength, so if they flex the car could topple sideways. And since they transfer all stresses into the rest of the body panel, you may see the door seams, etc. actually flex out of line when jacking on them. Not a good idea, they are not structural points.

I think I've seen "C" shaped steel saddles used by all the Japanese companies, again straddling the welds, but they leave more room for it to fit.

Having had a "one legged" jack (a GM bumper jack, not this Audi work of modern art) slip out and drop a car one day, I much prefer a scissor jack, with a much larger base area in contact with the ground. Lifting from under a load, not from beside it.

I have seen a soccer ball inflated as en engine jack, and I know there used to be some kind of similar "ball" sold for cars, that used the exhaust to blow it up. But I think I'll explore for structural points (frame, suspension) that my saddle jack or bottle jack can reach.

"No, you vill never need to use the jack. Chust call our roadside assistance and zey will bring it to the dealership!"

HZ60

I completely agree that lifting on the pinch welds is a bad idea structurally. As I said though, I saw the dealer and the tire shop do it with their lifts and figured they knew what they were doing, dumb move on my part. I should have questioned them at the time, I sure will in the future. I did notice while I was under there getting the pics that the rubberized undercoating on the 5" sections of the pinch welds I used my "adapter" on were all smashed and peeling away. You can kinda see it in the pics. I'm going to have to re-seal them, maybe some plasti-dip or some of that undercoating in a can? Don't want any rust issues. I'm still concerned about the adapters that straddle the weld on both sides as the OEM only puts pressure on the inner panel behind the weld. Is the outer panel strong enough to take some of the weight or will it damage the rocker panel?

Thanks,

Redd

I wouldn't know about the panel strength but would suggest that the outer panel is just cosmetic, any load could distort it. I'd clean out the weld with brake cleaner spray, let that evaporate and then recoat with a spray undercoat product, which is likely to get in further than using a "seam sealer" type of goo.

Some dealers and tire shops do things right. But in the 20 years I kept track of how well authorized shops had retorqued my wheel bolts (wheel pulled for brake inspection per annual inspection) I found only two shops in 20 years that didn't grossly overtorque them.

When I asked the dealer why they'd overtorqued my wheel bolts around 125lb instead of the 75 spec, he said that was impossible, they'd never had anyone complain about that. OK, so my torque wrench is lying and I've had massive muscle loss...right. (This is not regarding my Audi, let that be clear.)

One more reason I'll be trying the Slime pump first, rather than changing a flat.

Coolieman1220

Circa Citroen DS? Pneumatic suspension that could lift the car up to change a tire?

There is no issue with jacking on the subframe of our cars. Audi engineers designed it this way and we all know they go above and beyond. Remember that you are not jacking up the full weight of the vehicle on one point but just roughly 25%. Our unibody is incredibly stiff and reinforced for such stiffness. Think about it this way, if jacking on pinch welds could cause your door to flex and other stresses then how the hell can we have a full glass moon roof? clearly glass is not flexible so we must have a VERY stiff frame to stop that from breaking every time we hit a pot hole or bump.

Go ahead and jack away guys. No worries, if you do it right you won't break anything. If you don't trust me, trust my engineering degree? I'll see if I can run a finite element analysis for you guys to show that it is ok.