Jack points

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

casablanca

New member
Joined
Jan 26, 2016
Messages
4
I'm trying to rotate tyres on my leaf, and I see the points where I can put the jack stands. Where do i put the jack itself though? There should be a point at the front and another at the back, right?
 
http://www.nissanusa.com/content/dam/nissan/pdf/techpubs/leaf/2012/2012-leaf-roadside-assistance-guide.pdf


page 27...don't barf at how flimsy it looks
 
For rotating the tires on the LEAF, just use the front lifting point on the bottom sill, and lift the car until both the wheels are off the ground. The tires go front to back. Be sure to have the car in park, and the parking brake set.

leafjackpoint.png


Lug nut torque is 83 Ft./lbs.
 
Thanks for the link/info. The points you pointed me to (no pun intended) are where I can put the jack stands. I'm looking for where to put the jack itself to lift the car onto the jack stands... (?)
 
casablanca said:
I'm trying to rotate tyres on my leaf, and I see the points where I can put the jack stands. Where do i put the jack itself though? There should be a point at the front and another at the back, right?

What kind of jack? Floor? Scissor?

Floor jack...front I use under the mounting point on the chassis for the lower control arm; rear I put it under the mounting point for the shock.
 
casablanca said:
Thanks for the link/info. The points you pointed me to (no pun intended) are where I can put the jack stands. I'm looking for where to put the jack itself to lift the car onto the jack stands... (?)

I don't use jack stands, just lift the car up on the front jack point (which is at about the CG of the car), and the CG of the car will keep it balanced.

If you want you can stick a jack stand on the rear jack point, but the car will keep itself balanced just fine. One other point is that I use a impact wrench to remove the lug nuts, and a torque wrench to tighten them.

In the time it takes to set the car up on jack stands, you can have the front to back rotation done.

BTW, I have been safely rotating the tires on multiple LEAFs this way since 2011.
 
OrientExpress said:
casablanca said:
Thanks for the link/info. The points you pointed me to (no pun intended) are where I can put the jack stands. I'm looking for where to put the jack itself to lift the car onto the jack stands... (?)

I don't use jack stands, just lift the car up on the front jack point (which is at about the CG of the car), and the CG of the car will keep it balanced.

If you want you can stick a jack stand on the rear jack point, but the car will keep itself balanced just fine. One other point is that I use a impact wrench to remove the lug nuts, and a torque wrench to tighten them.

In the time it takes to set the car up on jack stands, you can have the front to back rotation done.

BTW, I have been safely rotating the tires on multiple LEAFs this way since 2011.

This makes sense. If you are just rotating, it is for a short period of time, and no one is getting under the Leaf, so jackstands really aren't necessary. I haven't needed to do this yet on my Leaf, as my tire shop is nearby, so I just let them do it. They also use a torque wrench set correctly.
 
You shouldn't need to dismount more than one wheel at a time. Start with whichever position is the first in your rotation sequence, jack that wheel up, take it off, then throw on the spare tire, and ... uh ..... :oops:
 
If you have non-directional tires; you're doing the job properly; and you have no spare to throw into the mix, then you need to have at least two corners of the car up in the air at the same time, and they can't be either both front or both rear because the front driver side wheel will come off and go to the driver rear while the driver rear comes off and goes to the passenger front; then the front passenger side comes off and goes to the passenger rear while the passenger rear goes to the driver front. So you need some combination of multiple jacks or a single jack and some other kind of stand. Clear?

So the way I usually do it is get the driver front off and leave that end jacked up. Then I use a second jack for the other 3 corners with the driver front being the last to go back on. Then I let the car off that first jack.

Directional tires are a little more simple being as they only get swapped front to back and vice-versa on the same side of the car. You'd still need to find somewhere to jack the car around it's center of gravity to get by with only the one jack though, and I personally think that any carelessness without having the right equipment would be asking for damage to a unibody vehicle. :shock:

That said, my HF racing jack has a special accessory bar that sits on top of the jack saddle and extends a pair of pads out to reach the lift points on a car's underbody. It's something I've often thought that I'll buy someday. :D
 
mwalsh said:
If you have non-directional tires; you're doing the job properly; and you have no spare to throw into the mix, then you need to have at least two corners of the car up in the air at the same time, and they can't be either both front or both rear because the front driver side wheel will come off and go to the driver rear while the driver rear comes off and goes to the passenger front; then the front passenger side comes off and goes to the passenger rear while the passenger rear goes to the driver front. So you need some combination of multiple jacks or a single jack and some other kind of stand. Clear?

On the LEAF, (and any front wheel drive car) the tire rotation is not side to side, but front to back. To accomplish this you only need one (1) jack and lift from the front jack point which is also the CG of the car. This will lift both front and rear tires, so rotating them is quick and easy. For safety, make sure the car is in Park, and the emergency brake is set. A wheel chock on the back side of the rear tire on the opposite side can provide extra safety.
 
OrientExpress said:
On the LEAF, (and any front wheel drive car) the tire rotation is not side to side, but front to back. .

You are wrong. The correct rotation for front wheel drive vehicles (where the tires are all the same size) is front to rear and rear crossover to front. Directional and staggered performance tires being the exception. And the LEAF does not have directional or staggered performance tires (I don't actually even know what those are, but they ain't on a LEAF).
 
OrientExpress said:
On the LEAF, (and any front wheel drive car) the tire rotation is not side to side, but front to back. To accomplish this you only need one (1) jack and lift from the front jack point which is also the CG of the car. This will lift both front and rear tires, so rotating them is quick and easy. For safety, make sure the car is in Park, and the emergency brake is set. A wheel chock on the back side of the rear tire on the opposite side can provide extra safety.

I thought the owner's manual (at least the 2011 from what I remember) specified the rotation as Front to Back. But I do feel that a cross pattern would be better, especially in the LEAF, as the outer edge of the front tires seem to wear so much quicker than the rest of the tire. I've wondered if the later year LEAF manuals have advised for the cross pattern. (As shown in C at Tire Rack: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=43 )

I use two Prius jacks, which seem to work fine at the two side lifting points. It just seems to be better to only support half the weight at each point, even though it probably is possible to do with just one. It also makes me feel a bit better knowing there is a backup there too, not that anything on the Prius jack would fail.
 
sub3marathonman said:
I thought the owner's manual (at least the 2011 from what I remember) specified the rotation as Front to Back.

If that's the case, then the 2011 manual (and any other year manual with similar advice) is wrong. The only other acceptable pattern for non-directional tires on front wheel drive vehicles (where all tires are the same size) is front to rear crossover and rear to front crossover.
 
Back in the 20th century when bias-ply tires were the norm, cross-rotation was the accepted way to rotate tires. Some still advocate this method, and there is certainly nothing wrong with doing it that way, but this type of rotation has no advantage for modern radial tires. Front to rear rotation is the norm today for front-wheel, all-wheel, and rear-wheel drive cars whose tires are symmetrical. Personally I have been rotating my vehicle's tires for many years with the front to rear method. I keep track of the tread wear, and have achieved excellent results.

Nissan as well as most automobile manufacturers (such as VW) also agrees with this method. Front to back rotation is faster, easier, and yields the same results as side to side rotation.

From the 2014 LEAF owners manual:
LEAF-tire_rotation.jpeg


From a 2015 VW FWD vehicle owners manual:
GTI-tire_rotation.jpeg


Regular rotation is only one part of the pie for maximizing tire life, the others include, proper inflation, and wheel alignment.

But if ones preference is still the old school X-pattern, then by all means have at it. Having all the wheels off the car makes it much easier to reach the grease nipples for the suspension lubrication task, and while under there it is also a great time to check the fluid levels in the batteries! :D
 
^ Nissan also recommends 36 psi for the tires, and we've learned how that works out...

I think mwalsh has the right of it and the tire shop I use also does this modified cross pattern. And, yes, it is for radials. The idea is to even out wear.

It is especially important where I live because the hairpin turns I drive happen to be harder on the front passenger side tire than the others. That's because the speeds and g forces on descending left curves happen to be higher than descending right curves and ascending curves are at lower speeds and g forces, so it doesn't remotely even out.

Others may have more balanced driving conditions but, in general, passenger side tires often wear a bit faster than driver side tires, due to rougher road conditions on the outside edges of the road.
 
Well...my disinclination to follow the advice offered in the Nissan manual comes from close to 40 years of rotating my own tires (yes, going all the way back to when they had a bias ply) following the method my father used, and the method his father before him would have used had he been able to buy a FWD vehicle.

BTW, the Michelin website (I currently run MXV4s) does not indicate front to rear as being OK for their tires. For that matter, neither does Bridgesone as a matter of course, though they do cop-out and tell you to "follow your vehicle manufacturer's recommendations" in their literature.

So if certain parts of the Internet (and Nissan) say front to rear is OK so long as the tires are radials, then I guess it's OK. But I'll pass, thank you very much.

I also happen to disagree with waiting until 7,500 miles to rotate the tires. I feel they should be done after no more than 5,000 miles.
 
This discussion does show that those of us that have been wrenching (and rotating tires) since the 1960's prefer different ways to do the same thing, and achieve the same results.

Personally my take away has always been if there are multiple ways of achieving the same task with the same result, then I always take the easiest, cheapest and fastest.

In this particular discussion, since there is absolutely no difference between a front to back vs. the X-pattern of rotating tires, I recommend the front to back method. Readers can take their pick of which way they prefer.

FWIW, I also change the oil on my ICE cars at the factory interval of 10K (and 15K on the other car) miles, and inflate tires to factory recommendation with excellent results. With the Ecopias the front to back method of rotation and factory inflation returns a 45K mile tread life with uniform wear, plus an average energy efficiency of 4.8 m/kW.
 
Back
Top