Sunday, Nov 14, 2010 at 01:06
Hi Ed,
Whilst you may be great with the welder (i'm not questioning your skills), it's not worth the risk doing it yourself. A factory manufacturing to the Australian Standards must pass a set of quality controls, in the
home workshop this does not happen.
Your rig may "look strong" and hold up for years, but it's not worth the risk of something going wrong or the stand failing without notice while in use. There is no way for you to
test your stand at
home (e.g. you can't x-ray to welds). It's even more concerning that you're lending them to others to use. God help if something went wrong and the Coronor asked "why was a non-approved vehicle stand being used to support the vehicle". What would you say?
To anyone out there, i'd recommend using Australian Standards approved trolley jack and vehicle support stands. You can't put a price on your safety whilst working under a car, it simply isn't worth the risk. Unless your a qualified engineer and have the facilities to design, manufacture and
test (the to Aus Standards), leave it to those who can.
Far to many people are killed working under cars, the last thing we need to do is encourage practices which may keep these figures high.
Nick
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