Reading all of the responses was interesting to me, in that it changed my mind on my margins for safety. I have a pair of 3 ton jack stands (ratcheting type). After reading all of the responses, I started to feel like those weren't adequate. So I looked up the weight specs for my truck (1953 3100) and found the following (
1953 Chevy Truck Specs ). If I'm reading it correctly, the total curb weight of an unloaded truck is 3265 lbs, split between 1845 lbs in the front and 1420 lbs in the rear. Since 1 ton = 2000 lbs, this total truck weight equates to 1.63 tons.
To complicate things, I'm assuming that the rating for the jack stands is for each stand. So for my original 3 ton jack stands, this is less than 100% margin each. So...I bought a pair of 6 ton ratcheting (with locking pin) jack stands. This gives me 368% margin on each stand, when using the total truck weight for calculating. I know each stand does not support the weight of the entire truck, but don't know a way to figure out what load it is actually carrying.
So what I'm thinking...using the 6 ton stands on the front and the 3 ton stands on the rear, until I can replace the 3's with 6's. Sound ok or am I looking at being added to the Darwin list in 2015?
