Jack Your Car Up With Exhaust
Here's the idea: You attach a hose to the exhaust pipe of your car, which inflates a balloon that can lift a three-ton vehicle 18 inches and hold it for as long as 45 minutes. The utility is obvious: You can change a tire or even help extract a stranded car from mud or deep snow without the use of a flimsy traditional car jack.
We have an issue, however: Let's make sure that balloon holds, as having a car collapse unexpectedly as you receive a face-full of tailpipe emissions would not be fun. Also, as with any balloon, it must surely be possible to over-inflate it, right?
Also, a regular jack — which, honestly, does not take a degree in nuclear physics to operate — will work even if the car's battery is dead.
Exhaust Air Jack Lifts Your Car With a Toxic Balloon (Gizmodo)
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What if they had a air pump with that came with it?
Regular air is better than emission air, plus, then you could use it even if your battery is dead.
Where this would be really nice is on uneven or soft surfaces where the jack could slip out.
Good idea, there are more facts about this great product here ;
http://www.carbasics.co.uk/inflatable_exhaust_air_jack.htm
Some not too clear thinking going on here ...
"Let's make sure that balloon holds, as having a car collapse unexpectedly as you receive a face-full of tailpipe emissions would not be fun." - If it doesn't, that's probably going to be the least of your problems! And it would dissipate upwards quickly too, being warm.
"as with any balloon, it must surely be possible to over-inflate it" - er, no, not if it has a pressure relief valve, which it almost certainly does. Besides which, if it builds up much pressure the engine will just stop due to backpressure.
"a regular jack — will work even if the car's battery is dead" - how often do you need to jack up a car with a dead battery? If you do, you're going to need to get the engine started anyway, so just get that sorted first!
Incidentally, this isn't a new idea, I first saw something almost identical over 20 years ago.