A safer alternative to sleeping on exhaust gases

Friday, July 14, 2006

Dear Tom and Ray: This is a family relations/exhaust gases type of question. When camping, I use the exhaust gases from my Bronco II to inflate our queen-size air mattress, which would require about a month to inflate by blowing in it. I duct-tape an unused plastic gas-can nozzle to the tailpipe, and then hold the other end tightly to the mattress's air opening. After about 40 seconds, when the mattress is really filled, I quickly screw the plug into the mattress, and voil‡ -- I'm set. But this does raise a couple of questions, as well as the ire of my dear spouse. Might I damage my truck's engine? It doesn't seem to have any effect on the truck. Might we all, as my wife suspects, die of carbon-monoxide poisoning if the air mattress were to burst while we sleep? I've been using this method for several years with no harmful effects that I'm aware of, but boy do I get a hard time about the process. Am I a reckless and irresponsible danger to my family, or a resourceful follower of the tradition of shade-tree mechanics the world over? P.S.: It does stink pretty badly when I deflate the mattress, but since I always do it outside, I don't see any problem.

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