Bent jacking point. Managed to straighten.

[Konrad C]

Last year I noticed the jacking point under the car was bent. I tried to straighten the metal by knocking it back. Nothing worked. The metal was very hard to force back - hammering was causing more damage and pliers did not have enough force. Then yesterday I made an improvised tool, using a ball joint separator and two bits of metal. The following pictures shows how it was done.

 

The metal is as flat as I could get it. Now the jack should fit fine. I cleaned up the metal and sprayed anti-rust. 
It's great to improvise.

 

[fordulike]

I've had that issue before, but I used a pair of mole grips instead of pliers, which did the trick.

[Konrad C]

8 hours ago, fordulike said:

I've had that issue before, but I used a pair of mole grips instead of pliers, which did the trick.

Mole grips did not work, as they cannot generate the force needed to squeeze the metal together. The metal is reinforced triple layer, and two of the layers were bent out further than the brown painted metal I used as part of the compression tool. It took a lot of force to distort the metal in the first place. The car jack would not fit! That is why I made this tool to press the layers flat and back together, as before. Mole grips may work on other cars which have thinner/single plate metal jacking points, but not on the Avensis.

I wish I had taken a photo before the repair, to give you an idea of the damage.

[fordulike]

The metal on mine was only splayed out a little bit, but enough for the groove in the jack not to fit. It annoys me when garages and tyre fitters just jack cars up using the sill, without any thought about damaging it.