Alternate lift points for rear of car?

[IDTag]

Was going to put the 328 up on the lift but ran into a problem, my lift arms are too long to reach all 4 jack pad points under the rockers. Can line up the front or the rear but not both.

Would prefer to use the front pads and a different rear lift point just for the sake of balancing the car. Is there another safe lift point for the rear? Would have to be something farther back.

[XnWarden]

Rear subframe. It's the cross brace that runs under the diff.

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[pbonsalb]

Can you use the middle of the arm rather than the end? Drive onto planks if the middle of the arm is too high. Consider multi stage arms if you don’t have them already.

[IDTag]

Thought about using the middle of the arm but would need to find some heavy rubber to put between the arm and that plastic puck. Hard plastic on steel just didn't seem like a very stable setup.

Lift has 2 stage arms and I spaced the columns as far apart as possible when we installed them. No problem on any of my other vehicles, just the E36.
20191102_162853 (1024x768).jpg

[spyderg0d]

If you place the care properly you should be able to get the car on the lift. There are much smaller cars that those lifts can make way to the jack points.

[IDTag]

Issue is the distance between the lift points front to back. They're spaced toward the centerline of the car, 15" front and 13" rear, 49" between the two. I have had smaller cars up but was lifting on the pinch welds much closer to the wheel well.

If the arms were 6" shorter everything would line up perfectly... I do have a cutting torch.

[pbonsalb]

Attachment 665488I had similar problems but would just stick a block of wood on the lift arm itself and not try to use the pad on the end of the arm. The picture is of my E90M3 but the idea is the same. It’s like 2 post lifts are meant for ladder on frame trucks not the rocker panel lift points on many foreign cars.

[MINIz guy]

A block of wood instead of rubber like pbonsalb said would work.

[IDTag]

Ended up using the middle of the front arms and the lift arm pads on the designated lift points for the rear. Found something like neoprene laying around the shop so cut a couple pieces to stick between the arm and the puck on the body. Worked just fine, doesn't move around with that bit of traction.

Now that it's up in the air looks like I have some work to do. Car looks like it was really clean before someone decided to screw it up. Lowered it way too much, obviously had tires that were too wide so rubbed the paint off the inside of all 4 fender lips and starting to rust. They torched the exhaust pipe off the muffler and left everything hanging so the loose muffler tore up the rear valance. Left rear spring is broken and the left rear shock tower is wasted. Would guess that was from the broken spring letting the shock beat things to death.

Ah well, got it cheap enough so more a matter of time than money.