Getting familiar with the wife's HHR. I do all of our maintenance and modifications on our vehicles and wanted to get underneath the car to survey the situation.

Now I don't know what a 'normal' ground clearance is on the HHR. This one definitely has a forward slant to it. Dunno if that is normal or if someone lowered the front end.

There is absolutely no way my ramps are gonna work to get the front off the ground. That long nose won't let my ramps get close to the tires. On my wife's previous car I had to lift the front a little by hand to get the ramps under but I don't have the oomph to lift the HHR that high and it would just damage the fenders anyways.

Got down on the floor to look things over. I have a large low profile floor jack but it ain't gonna roll under the front and I didn't really see anyplace to lift from anyways. Could be something under there but couldn't see it.

What I'm thinking is I'm gonna have to get a second floor jack, place one under each side behind the wheels and alternately lift at the frame until I can put the ramps under the tires or jackstands under the critter.

If anyone has a smoother procedure I'd be interested in hearing it.

Wren

 

Never used ramps on mine, always used either a floor jack and a decent set of stands or rented a lift bay at the local diy place. depends on what is getting worked on.

 

I’ve never been able to slide my HF low profile 1 1/2 aluminum floor jack under Oldblue, even before I lowered it 1 3/4 up front .
I place the jack under the frame area just near the rear LCA bolts.

 

When I absolutely need ramps I found that anchoring them made it so I could force the nose up. I drilled a couple of holes in the floor and stuck a random bolt in them. Just enough to keep them from sliding.

My other car is a Mazda Protege it is even lower, no way.

There are ramps made with longer slants.

 

If you add some 2x 6" boards in front of ramps, it will get the front started up, you may need to make 2 steps..

I just use my floor jack tho..

 

Think I'm gonna go for the board idea, see how that works. Don't really wanna buy a second floor jack 'cause, odd as it sounds, my garage already suffers from tool overload.

Wren

 

Why would you need a second floor jack? I just use one even if I need both wheels off the ground. Jack on side up, as said from the bump just behind the rear LCA bolt. Slide a jack stand in, move to the other side.

 

If you rotate the tires by the Owner Manual 2 jacks saves a lot of energy. Doable with jackstands, but easier with 2 jacks.

 

I always used my Rhino ramps on mine. I wasn't lowered and never had a problem. Granted the is the back, but used the same ramps on the front.

 

I was trying to remember the name of those, the closest my feeble brain could do was "gator".