Bonehead Award of the year

dragoneggs · Jan 8, 2018

Bottle jacks are useful but... A couple years ago I decided to replace a 6x6 post supporting my deck and hot tub. Used a bottle jack to lift the deck so I could swap out for a new post. The temp post that I was using for jacking wasn't as long as I had preferred but it was there, so I used a few pieces of wood to raise the bottle jack up to what I needed. Just as I got the deck raised high enough to allow swap out, the temp support buckled due to unstable footing and kicked out the existing post! :shocked: Luckily the existing post got hung up on the support U bracket and couldn't go further otherwise my 12x12 deck would have dropped 10ft with my hot tub for ballast and I might have been crushed. Now I am much more careful with jacking. Dam lucky on that one.

aczlan · Jan 8, 2018

dragoneggs said:
Bottle jacks are useful but... A couple years ago I decided to replace a 6x6 post supporting my deck and hot tub. Used a bottle jack to lift the deck so I could swap out for a new post. The temp post that I was using for jacking wasn't as long as I had preferred but it was there, so I used a few pieces of wood to raise the bottle jack up to what I needed. Just as I got the deck raised high enough to allow swap out, the temp support buckled due to unstable footing and kicked out the existing post! :shocked: Luckily the existing post got hung up on the support U bracket and couldn't go further otherwise my 12x12 deck would have dropped 10ft with my hot tub for ballast and I might have been crushed. Now I am much more careful with jacking. Dam lucky on that one.

Cribbing is a requirement for jacking like that...

Aaron Z

k0ua · Jan 8, 2018

4570Man said:
Chain both ends of the bucket to a log or other beam that痴 heavy enough and put a bottle jack in the middle.

If you get good at doing it, you can open you open business doing "smile removals". The trick is to go just a little past "square" as it springs back a bit. Or so I have heard...

MossRoad · Jan 9, 2018

I wanted to change the blades on my 60' finish mower deck. I figured I'd just roll it up to the wall, lift the front up by hand, tip it up to vertical on its rear wheels, lean it against the wall, and change the blades. So I lean down, grab the front of the deck, pick it up (hey, I'm not too old to lift this, I feel great), slap that bad boy up vertical against the wall..... and the back (now bottom) wheels roll away from the wall and the back of the deck rolls on top of both my feet right up to my ankles, enough for the wheels to come off the ground about 1/4".

So I'm standing pinned there with the nice, straight steel edge of the rear discharge deck resting on the tops of both feet, and I can't move and it hurts! :mur:

I was wearing flip flops. I look down and I can see skin shavings against the mower deck edge on both of my feet.

The only way out was to pull the top of the mower back towards me, which meant putting the entire weight of the deck on the steel edge on the tops of my feet again. :shocked:

So I took a breath and did it. Then did the "stupid dance" around the garage a few times. Felt like I was gonna throw up. :laughing:

Ended up with about an inch of missing skin on the tops of both feet and very long, dark bruises for a week.

cat fever · Jan 9, 2018

OK gonna go for it;

Years ago we were deer hunting in Wyoming. It started raining and rained for a couple days. Fearing snow would soon be coming we decided to leave. My dad had a 33' fifth wheel camp trailer and I had a 30' fifth wheel. It was very muddy leaving and one of the climbs caused my dad to get stuck. That was at about 7 in the morning. It took us all day and a winch truck (40 ton truck) to get him out. Knowing that I would not be able to make the climb in my truck, a two wheel drive chevy I pulled the pin on my fifth wheel and dropped the landing legs so my brother could hook up to it and pull it up the hill. Did that in the morning after my dad got stuck. Well, when it was time to go we decided to just chain my brothers truck to mine and have both trucks do the work. So I raised the landing legs on my fifth wheel got in the truck and honked at my brother and waved him on. Ooooops, forgot to close the pin on the fifth wheel hitch. Yep, pulled right out from under the trailer. When I felt it land on my bed rails I slammed on my brakes, would have been somewhat OK but my brother was putting the hammer down on his truck to make it up the muddy road. That was over 20 years ago and still pi$$es me off.

4570Man · Jan 9, 2018

So how bad was the aftermath of that one?

cat fever · Jan 9, 2018

4570Man said:
So how bad was the aftermath of that one?

Did not damage the trailer, but you can imagine how the bed rails on my truck looked. It was a 1977 3/4 ton. I was planning to get a new truck so I didn't bother even trying to fix it. Sold it "as is".

So my pride was the only real damage.

4570Man · Jan 9, 2018

So you didn’t drag the truck out for under it? If so how’d you get it back up.

cat fever · Jan 9, 2018

Nope, got stopped just before the trailer came off the rails. We were able to put the landing legs down and back back under it. Lucky I did get stopped. Otherwise my tailgate and wiring harness would have been ripped out, not to mention the fifth wheel slamming down on the ground.