My question is a little unusual. In have a Chrysler town and country with the seats that fold into the floor. this moves the fuel tank nearly dead center of the van. I need to drop the tank but due to my girth need considerable room. I’m working in sloppy mud and using my backhoe to get the van high enough. Nerve wracking to say the least.
My question is this. Would bales of hay support the weight of the van so that I could work under it without fear of it crushing me?
Moderator Note
Thread title edited to more clearly indicate the topic
Supporting the van with bales of hay seems like a really, really, really bad idea to me. Get yourself a couple of ramps and a couple of good solid jack stands.
I know little of such stuff, but if I couldn’t get it on a hard surface I would not dream of doing this. Bales squash, bales slip, bales explode.
Picture how it’d feel to have the machine slowly crush you as the hay bales give way. This feeling will give you your answer.
But at least when the fuel leaks out, it can soak into the hay bales, ready for some random spark to ignite it.
I can still see my friend saving a few bucks by getting a used part off of a 73 Mustang. The center underside of it. I forget what the part was, but it didn’t want to come off, resulting in much heaving and yanking.
Did I mention the 'Stang was standing on four tall jackstands?
Did I mention the jackstands were standing on gravel?
Yeah, he came out from under with his cheap part, and it’s been nightmare fuel for 30 years now. I swear the corners of the car were moving six inches.
So maybe my judgement is impaired, but the OP’s description gave me PTSD.
Work safe. It’s just a fraggin’ minivan.
Why not just tip the van on it’s side onto a haystack? Then you could work on it standing up.
Just don’t drop a tool. It will be like looking for a, oh never mind.
“And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation.
Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf.
I shrank back – but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward.
At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison.”
- [SIZE=“1”]Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum 1850.[/SIZE]
Bad idea … like “make sure your affairs are settled” bad idea … skip the cost of the backhoe and buy jack stands, timbers and a hydraulic jack …
Since he calls it ‘my backhoe’, I would assume that expense has already been taken care of.
When I was working with the Army I enjoyed a 2-week deployment with a mechanized infantry unit. In the tropics. In rainy season. To say the exercise area was muddy was massive understatement. Everything was red goo a couple feet deep. All was sticky. Some areas were pretty stiff; other spots were like a cheap milkshake.
One morning a crewman for a M113 armored personnel carrier - Wikipedia could not be found. They eventually discovered he’d chosen to sleep under his vehicle to both lay out flat and not get rained on. There’s not room inside those things to really stretch out.
Overnight during the unremitting rain the vehicle settled into the mud. And all 13 tons of it slowly pressed him into the mud. He was more drowned than he was crushed. But he was still crushed.
Of all the training accidents I was ever close to, that one scared me the worst. What a miserable and slow way to die.
What does “drop the tank” mean in this context?
Disconnect and remove the fuel tank from its mounts under the center of the vehicle. To do that he needs to get the underside of the vehicle a couple feet above ground level.
Dude, you have a backhoe, right? Just dig a trench and drive over it, like they do at Valvoline. I’m not an expert, but that’s got to be safer than hay bales.
Don’t forget the trench plates. Being buried alive when the car collapses the sloppy mud walls is not good.
If, as I expect, we never hear back from the OP, is that a sign he finished successfully or that he died trying? :eek:
Jiffy Lube has a concrete-lined trench, nice and safe. If you dig a trench in soil - especially if you’re going to park a car directly over your head - you’re going to want some sort of trench shoring or free-standing liner; without that, you’re still risking death. OP indicated he was working in sloppy mud; this doesn’t sound like the kind of soil one wants to rely on for load-bearing purposes, especially not where one’s life is at stake.
Ninja’d by LSLGuy…
Got it, mud is an issue. I was just thinking about how OSHA defines a trench and requires a trenchbox only if it is deeper than five feet. If the trench is shallow, do we still have a problem? Can it be shored up with wooden beams in lieu of a trenchbox?
I mean, it’s not a concrete floor and jack stands, but we’re thinking outside the box here. If he waits for the ground to dry, it has to be safer than hay bales, right? Though that isn’t necessarily a very high standard of “safety” to exceed.
Make sure you film it. Tosh is getting short of good material.