DIY: Wooden Wheel Stands

[06wrx4me]

Disclaimer:

The author of this thread is not responsible if you injure yourself or others in any way. Use good judgement and sound engineering principles when constructing your wheel stands. The following thread is for reference only. By continuing to read this thread, you are absolving the author of any/all legal ramifications should you inflict any damage or injury, and are agreeing to the terms and conditions.

Now that that is out of the way....

This is a DIY for Wooden wheel stands. They can be used to get a car up in the air safely for any work needing to be performed underneath. They would be great for use when doing a clutch job, exhaust, alignment, tranny replacement etc. I bought the majority of the wood, but did have some of the supplies on hand. Total cost was right around $100. They also work great as portable work benches, stands and saw horses.

Engineering theory:

Why Wood? Simply put, it is easy to work with and very strong when used properly. Think about it, your house is made of wood. Wood is very strong in column loading, much stronger than in bending. I saw many tutorials around the net to build wheel stands out of wood used in bending and none of them seemed to be done soundly.

Basically this design uses five 4x4's in column loading. The rest of the apparatus is to provide lateral stability. This website is a good sanity check when constructing something of this nature.

https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/arch...7.1/index.html

As you can see on this website, one 4x4 has a factor of safety of about 7 for a single wheel. But balancing a wheel on a single 4x4 would be a virtual impossibility and unsafe, which is why I landed on this design.

Capacity:

These stands are pretty strong. As you can see below there is a 4x4 directly located under the wheel and tire. As far as a max goes I honestly don't know. Comfortably 1000lbs+, but I could easily see how these stands would hold 2x that properly positioned. Hell they rate these crappy ramps at Harbor Freight at far higher than even that.

Step 1:

Make a sketch with cut list and BOM.



My intent was to use these stands for DIY Alignment. As such I sized them so that I could comfortably adjust the camber bolts from underneath while the car was on these stands. The overall dimensions ended up being 24" x 16" x 24" tall. Note: This sketch does not show 100% of the design. These stands may be a little tall for the typical home user (I used them in conjunction with a 2 post maxjax lift), but this design can easily be adapted for a shorter stand for use with floor jacks.

I also ordered turntable bearings for use when measuring caster. I settled on 1000lb capacity Mcmaster Carr #1797k11.

I also made removable stop plates (cause no one likes their car taking a 2' fall).


Step 2 Buy Materials:

My design used roughly:

5@4"x4"x8'
6@2"x4"x8'
1@1/2"x4'x8' OSB roofing or flooring plywood
2@1lb boxes of 3" deck screws
2@1lb box of 2" deck screws
1@1lb box of 1.625" deck screws
[email]1@pk 50 threaded inserts for wood
2@small tubes of Liquid nails construction adhesive
+ random scraps of wood I had laying around.



Step 3 make small pieces out of big ones:


Here are some pics of the process.

* I was able to use exactly 1 sheet of the OSB by cutting my pieces 15.875" X 23.875" to account for the saw blade thickness.
* I cut all the pieces ahead of time so I could bang these things out.



These are the center stability braces I used out of the OSB. They were simple to make and actually aided in assembly making it easier.



Now onto Assembly!

The first thing I did was to attach the small mounting blocks for the center stability braces to the 4x4's. I predrilled these little blocks of 2x4 in my drill press ahead of time to make it simple. A little liquid nails and my cordless impact made short work of it all. After the blocks were attached to the 4x4's, I attached all the 4x4's to the mounting base. Note: not that it matters, but OSB has a rough side and a smooth side. I constructed these stands so that the rough side faced the floor, and the smooth side faced the tire.



I used 1.625" screws from plywood side into all the 4x4's and 2x4's.

Next step was to add the middle brace piece.




Next step was to add the top plate, adhered with 4 screws per 4x4 and more liquid nails.



Then I added 4@2"x4"x24" Lg to the top and bottom surfaces and attached them to both the plywood and 4x4's. Their intent is to distribute the load more evenly while also strengthening the top and bottom plates.



Here is a good end view to show this stage of the game.



Finally I added 4@ 2"x4"x5.5" tie on blocks top and bottom just to tie everything together.

[06wrx4me]

Then repeat 3 more times....



Now onto the stop plates. I happened to have this 3/4" thick OSB left over from a previous project, but you could use virtually anything as a stop plate. I cut them, measured, drilled holes, then transferred to all sides of the stands. Then I used a T handle allen wrench to install the threaded inserts so I could bolt the on and off.



I then chose 2 to be my dedicated front tire stands and installed the inserts for the turn table bearings.



And pics of them installed:

[06wrx4me]

And here my WRX is on top of them while I was aligning it. FWIW these stands didn't move. There was no deflection, no bending, no creaking, they are strong like bull. I actually left my car on these stands overnight. It had been a long day and I decided beer and sleep were more important than toe.

[Heide264]

Looks good.

Do you forsee any issues with the front stands being a bit higher than the rears (due to the thrust bearing)? Or did you take that into account when making the front stands so that they remain level?

[06wrx4me]

The caster plates are removable and were not bolted in place when setting camber or doing toe. That being said:

The thrust bearings with wooden plank on top are exactly 1" thicker. So I cut a removable shim the same size as the top for the backs 1" thick to account for it.