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)

Comments

[Phoenix]

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.

[Civisi]

Where this would be really nice is on uneven or soft surfaces where the jack could slip out.

[CarBasics]

Good idea, there are more facts about this great product here ;

http://www.carbasics.co.uk/inflatable_exhaust_air_jack.htm

[Graham]

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.