On Wed, 25 Jan 1995, Andrew Dooley wrote:
> While pulling the engine out of my Midget is one of the many projects I
> would prefer not to think about, the recent discussion brought to mind a
> question I had been thinking about. When I have to pull my engine, can I
> simply throw a rope over the trusses in my garage and pull, or would I
> be better off to invest some money and buy one of those big, ugly, engine-
> pulling things? I have this horrible feeling that the engine will be coming
I infer that umr.edu is University of Missouri Rolla. You are therefore
most likely studying engineering. We, on the other hand, have
demonstrated time and again that we collectively have all the engineering
expertise of the average turnip. So you, an engineering student, are
asking us how much a truss will hold? That is a classic exercise for the
student.
I have seen a Mercedes 4 cylinder diesel hanging from a rope looped around
a couple of garage trusses, but YTMD (your trusses may differ). Also, I
(and the owner of the engine and garage) were always careful to walk
around the spot where the diesel would fall, if it fell. Why not *rent*
one of those big ugly engine pulling things (soon, you will have to talk
like an engineer and call them big ugly crane things).
But seriously now. Why not get some 1/2 inch plywood and some 10
foot 2x4s. Make a nice box beam re: statics 101 with lots of glue and
screws, and finagle it over the bottom chord (forget the right word) of
the trusses, so any load applied to the box beam will be distributed over
about 4 trusses (assuming 24 inch on center). Loop your hoist rope around
the box beam. The whole engine and trans should not weigh more than about
350 pounds if you remove the manifolds and generator. You would have to
have some pretty piddly trusses if 4 of them could not hold that. If they
do come down, though, I never heard of you.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
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