A lift does two things: it puts the whole underside at working height and it lets the wheels hang or stay loaded as the job requires. Stands give you height at chosen points and nothing else, so the parts of the car far from those points stay low and the whole job has to be planned around them.
The consequence is that under-car work and over-car work cannot be merged. On a lift you move along the system in one continuous pass; on stands you go up and down, and every transition costs time and a tool you left in the wrong place.
Height is a trade. The higher the car, the more room underneath and the more careful the lift has to be, because the jack has to raise one end at a time and the stands have to be placed on structure rather than on floor pan. Use the jacking points the maker marked and put the stands under the subframe or the sill reinforcement.
Chock the wheels that stay on the ground before the car goes up, and leave the jack in place under the raised end as a backup. A jack that is merely supporting is not the same as a jack that is holding, and the difference is what keeps the car where you put it.
In a narrow gap the limiting factor is not strength but swing. A breaker bar needs an arc, and a ratchet needs a return stroke, and neither is available when the car is close to your chest. A low-profile socket on a short bar turns a bolt that a long bar cannot reach.
Where the gap is too small for either, a ring spanner with an offset head, tapped with the heel of a hand rather than swung, will often break a fastener loose. Slow, but it works in a space where nothing else will, and it does not need the car any higher.
The middle of a car on stands is the lowest point and the place where long sections have to be threaded through. A pipe that goes in easily from the rear on a lift has to be passed over the axle and under the floor with the car at head height, which is where a second person stops being optional.
Check the vehicle listing for how the system is split before you start. A system that comes in sections can be assembled around obstacles; a single long section has to be threaded, and threading needs the whole run accessible at once.
On stands, work rear to front. The rear of the system is lighter, lower and easier to release, and getting it out of the way opens the space you need for the heavier middle. It also means the car spends the difficult part of the job with less weight hanging on the supports you have left in place.
Do the final tighten with the car down on its wheels if the joints are reachable, because a replacement exhaust section tightened while the suspension hangs at full droop will sit at the wrong angle once the car is loaded. If the joints are not reachable with the car down, set the stands under the suspension so the car sits at ride height.
A stand job stops being safe when the work needs force applied sideways, when the car has to be moved while something is disconnected, or when the only place to put a stand is the floor pan. Any of those is a reason to stop, not to improvise.
The same applies when the job needs the wheels off and the car up at once on a slope or on a soft surface. Height without stability is worse than no height at all, and the cost of hiring a lift is small against the cost of a car coming down.
