Just wondering what you guys do? I mean some of this stuff seems suicidal without a lift, so do you guys make do or just farm the work out at that point?
I'm kinda at a cross roads here with my tow vehicle. I want to rebuild the rear diff but damn I'm too old for this lay on the ground E36 M3. But paying somebody to do it will squarely eat up 50% of the cars street value. What to do, what to do...
Discuss.
Ramps and jack stands for 25 years. Most of that in the dirt. You make do.
Having said that, I did get a lift a couple months ago. It's amaaaaaaaaazing. I should have put it in a decade ago.
Line the ground with carpet or cardboard. Get bigger jack stands so you can have more lift height. Then just suck it up.
Ramps/jack stands/cardboard/concrete floor/asphalt drive way. Just made 70 and don't mind working on my back. It's the knees that don't care for the getting up and down. A hoist would be nice, but garage has a low ceiling.
Jack stands and some old carpeting. I'm over 60 and I don't necessarily like it, but I'm not paying others to work on my toys. For the DDs I write cheques though.
I've never had a lift - never had the space or the $$. I do have a decent floor jack and some very nice ESCO jack stands that I trust. I have a small shop in my pole barn that has a nicely paved floor, so I'm at least not in the dirt anymore. I complain about it, but really the up/down on and off the floor is almost the same exercises I was doing with a trainer, so why not.
There are some jobs ahead of me where I may need more height than the ESCOs will give me - The Answer is going to need a clutch/flywheel at some point and I don't think I can get it high enough to safely get the transmission out, but I haven't really tried yet, so who knows?
The only part of this process that I hate is having to do it in the cold - that part just plain sucks and at 60+, I don't warm back up as easily as I used to...
Back in the day, there was a shop in town that would rent a lift stall for $50/day if they weren't backed up with work. I did that several times, keeping my old Datsun 510 on the road. That, regretfully, has gone away thanks to avaricious attorneys and paranoid insurers.
Jack and jackstands. The only way i get to use a lift is if i wait until after hours at work. After years of gravel driveway im just happy to have a garage at all too work in.
Someone left an approx. 3x3 piece of heavy cardboard in the apartment building basement I thought I'd hit the lottery. My very soon to be first trip to Harbor freight in MD will be for the anti fatigue mats recommended on this very forum.
I have 3 sons. About 75% of the time, I can send them under the car while I run tools.
A lift would have been much cheaper. 
I'll second what others have said. Ramps or jack and jackstands. I have a lift now, but I did that for 25-30 years of wrenching.
I'm 53 and have been using ramps/jackstands since I started working on cars in my early teens. Cardboard on gravel in my driveway is simply "just the way it is."
A friend has a large heated/air-conditioned shop and I help him a lot. Most of his projects (WWII-era trucks) are long-term so we make do with jackstands and cribbing. Getting a vehicle high enough to actually use a creeper on a smooth, warm floor makes that method quite comfortable.
I few weeks ago, my son's girlfriend's father got his two-post lift hooked up. Son and I replaced the rack and pinion on my daughter's SC with little effort, feet from the wood stove (It was 25 out.) and tools within reach. I've been spoiled now.
30 years of stands, hoists, and creepers.
I have been in the process of buying a lift for probably 25 of them. I still haven't pulled the trigger.
2 or 3 sheets of GOOD THICK Plywood make a great and if needed Removable floor.use tongue and groove if you can find some,(new is High Dollar) and an engine hoist will roll on it,way easier than gravel anyway,they also help level up the work area and stands are more stable.
Mattw, this is the "Grassroots" forum so you should expect these kind of answers. No, it's not suicidal but it sounds as if you might have not done work on your back before. Please, get some folks who have, to work with you on this so it doesn't become dangerous. You can do it :-)
One more for jack, jackstands... I think I rented a transmission jack once, though I'm not sure that it was any easier than the usual balancing on a regular jack or just bench-pressing (depends a lot on the trans! I wouldn't do that with a lot of them...) At least now I have walls and a ceiling and a heater. Doing the subframe swap on the 2002 in a carport with snow drifting in at the edges (Uphill! Both ways!) is a memory which will stay with me (including the part where it totally worked).
All that said, I've now gotten to hang out at a shop with lifts, and I'd prefer to get my exercise on a bicycle, and spend the above/below transition time holding a lift button instead of doing burpees. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of lift in my future, though my current shop only has room to lift a car about 4' before the ceiling intervenes...
Jack and jackstands until about 2 years ago when I got my 4 post lift.
Makes life so much better!
I did the jack and stands for years. I bought a lift from a closed tire store and it makes things much more pleasant. It has easily paid for itself in things i don't farm out.
Old rugs work wonders. Ill jack the car up, put jackstands down and roll a rug out underneath.
In reply to Fitzauto:
I use an old 7x9 rug from my living room. It's an ideal size to roll out on my gravel driveway and work like a civilized adult. They're especially nice in the winter to keep you off the cold ground.
Ransom wrote: One more for jack, jackstands... I think I rented a transmission jack once, though I'm not sure that it was any easier than the usual balancing on a regular jack or just bench-pressing (depends a lot on the trans! I wouldn't do that with a lot of them...)
I worked with an old timer back in the 70s. He rebuilt automatic transmissions on the side in his home garage without a hoist. With the car on ramps/jackstands he used a large assortment of 1x4s, 2x4s, 1x6s, 2x6s cut in 12" lengths. He would lower/raise the transmission by lifting/pulling down on tailshaft housing and shimming/unshimming the front and rear of trans pan with the wood shims. He said it was easier than messing around with a transmission jack. Never tried it since I worked on cars with manuals and just bench pressed/floor jacked them into place.
When I was working in the trade I worked at two places where lifts were few and far between. Most of our work was done on jack stands. Transmissions and drive train was done on a creeper.
Now I have a garage and heat with a cement floor. So ramps or jack stands are it. Low ceiling and budget rule out a lift. No transmission work though.
6 ton stands, wood blocks under the jack after the initial lifting to get the stands more extended if deemed necessary. A sheet of coroplast is good for laying on, I prefer it to a creeper. That or buy a bunch of 2x4s and put the car up on cribbing.
About a 33.3/33.3/33.3 mix of the checkbook, jacks and stands and these:
Recently, I've started leaning more towards the ramps if I decide to do things myself unless the whole car needs to be in the air. I'm also pretty fussy about keeping the garage floor clean so working on my back isn't as big of a deal.
I've been giving serious thought to a "low" lift like a Ranger Quickjack or similar for a while. So far I've been making do with jackstands and ramps (and the checkbook) but in order to lower the checkbook side of things I need a better way to work on cars. Using a creeper is OK for me but I've got bad knees and repeated kneeling makes for rather painful wrenching.
If my garage was tall enough for a full-size lift I'd already have one.
Don't think of a QuickJack as a lift -- think of it as an easier and safer way to get the car up onto high jackstands. That's about how high it goes, high enough to use a creeper for most things, but I still occasionally had to roll around on the bare concrete underneath my Miata a few times.
As far as kneeling goes, I would just sit down on the floor instead. Slower, but much easier on the knees.
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