OT? Changing a tire without a jack

Did you see the episode of One Car/Too Far where they used a log to overcome a broken rear axle ?? Can be seen at:

The best way is to get your overweight wife under the car. Then start feeding her lots of fattening food. Watch the car go up!!! (Or get her pregnant, while she's under the car, and wait 6 or 7 months to change the tire)....

I once saw a guy replace a tire on a tractor, in a field. His little floor jack was not strong enough to lift the tractor, and it broke. Rather than buy a bigger and better jack, he blocked the tractor up, then dug all the dirt out from under the tire. He later had to fill the hole with the dirt. Seemed like a lot of work, but he did change the tire.

I wish I had pictures.While I was working in Livingstone Zambia back in the seventies I was driving a 1949 VW Beetle. I broke the shift lever inside the "nose" of the transmission and needed to get under the car and pull the engine/transmission back and remove the shift housing, or "nose" of the transmission. I took the wheels off one side, then jacked up the other side with levers (a couple of fence posts and blocks of wood) and tipped the old beetle over on it's side so I could work on it standing up. Took it apart, walked about 6km to the school where I was able to reweld the part - then back to the car to reassemble it and drop it back on it's wheels.

A few years earlier I was doing body work on my '63 Valiant and had the bumpers off. I had a flat on a sunday afternoon, miles from home and only had a bumper jack. I jacked it up by the lip of the trunk lid (thankfully it was a rear tire) and jammed rocks and blocks of wood under the axle in case the trunk lid bent.

About the same timeframe, I backed a 5 ton stake truck back the shoulder of a road in the dark, across a side-road, and into a drainage ditch which I did not know existed (off the end of a concrete culvert) Using some old fence posts and planks I was able to liberate from a nearby wood pile I fashioned a ramp and got it jammed under the dual rear wheels dangling in mid air over the ditch and was able to drive it out

I'm guessing the only reason why people prefer to use a jack is because of the higher survival rate.

Hi, I'd just call road side assistance or AAA/CAA

The best story I have like this: I was helping put down the steel reinforcing for an expressway in Chicago, and it was time to go to lunch. Workers parked their cars just before the construction started. In front of my car was a 7 foot pile of dirt, and I figured I'd just drive my '50 Olds over the pile. I got a running start and got 3 or 4 feet in and 2 feet up and it wouldn't go anymore. I got out and all the wheels were off the ground, off the dirt.

I found the guy who drove the cherry picker and asked him for help. He picked up the front and moved me back off the hill. The car was fine because it had a a box frame ( O ) and an X-frame in the same place.

Wait..... I guess I didn't do anything but ask for help. :-(

You'd need bits of wood exactly the right length for that.

-snip-

I've never seen the show-- But that is definitely cool--

Jim

-snip-

Not if you were a terrorist/congress critter who had another terrorist in the car and were late for a speech.

Jim

I had a 1969 Datsun pickup yrs ago. I didn't like the scissor jack, so I replaced it with a bottle jack, not knowing that when the tire was flat, the bottle jack wouldn't fit under the chassis. I had a flat on Hwy 5 in central CA , in ~110+ heat.

I ended up digging a hole with my rock hammer for the jack, then under the tire. Took a while but, hey, 40 yrs later and I'm safe at home.

-Zz

Back on the farm all our trucks carried 2x6 blocks. Get a flat on an outside dual, one block, drive up on it and change tire. Reality is that it seemed all flats were on the _inside_ dual.

Harry K

I backed a late 70's Toyota Tercel into a pot hole while parking in NYC, dropping the rear passenger side wheel in far enough that the chassis sat on the ground. This did not please the young lady who owned the car, a young lady that I was trying to impress on our first date. She didn't want to drive into Manhattan, so I offered to drive, only to find myself staring at a very lopsided car.

Just as I was wondering how to get it out, a bar door opened and out came 4 good sized construction workers. I called them over, hopped into the driver's seat and they lifted the rear end so I could drive forward enough to get out of the hole.

I didn't give up the parking spot that night and she didn't give up anything - at least not to me.

On Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:49:18 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03 wrote in Re Re: OT? Changing a tire without a jack:

After that show, I'll bet she was a *lot* more interested in the construction workers. She knew who could care for her.

I dunno, he managed to get them to do his work for him. He could be middle management material.

A large round of firewood and a four foot plank would do it a lot easier.

Several large truck recovery companies use the same principal to right overturnrd rigs. The bag is inflated by the exhaust of the tow-truck

On a construction job where I was laying 4" PVC electrical conduit in trenches, we used the exhaust from our 2.5 ton GMC diesel trucks to heat the conduit so we could bend it by hand. There are all sorts of uses for waste heat and hot gasses. ^_^

TDD

That's the kind of mistake I would make.

Great story.

Here is one way, I wouldn't recommend it though.