Home  
Site Partners: SpotterGuides Veloce Books  
Related Sites: Your Link Here  

Go Back   TenTenths Motorsport Forum > Road Car Forums > Road Car Forum

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 4 May 2001, 12:10 (Ref:88824)   #1
mtpanorama
Veteran
 
mtpanorama's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Australia
Bathurst (best racetrack in the world)
Posts: 2,485
mtpanorama should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
If you want to fix it

10 Best Car Repair Tools of All Time
There are only 10 things in this world you need to fix any car, any place, any time.

1. Duct Tape: Not just a tool, a veritable Swiss Army knife in stickum and plastic. It's safety wire, body material, radiator hose, upholstery, insulation, tow rope, and more - in an easy to carry package. Sure, there's prejudice surrounding duct tape in professional competitions, but in the real world, everything from LeMans-winning Porsches to Atlas rockets and attack-helicopters use it by the yard. The only thing that can get you out of more scrapes is a quarter and a phone booth.

2. Vice Grips: Equally adept as a wrench, hammer, pliers, baling wire twister, breaker-off of frozen bolts and wiggle-it-til-it-falls-off tool. The heavy artillery of your tool box, vice grips are the only tool designed expressly to fix things screwed up beyond repair.

3. Spray Lubricants: A considerably cheaper alternative to new doors, alternator, and other squeaky items. Slicker than pig phlegm, repeated soakings will allow the main hull bolts of the Andrea Doria to be removed by hand. Strangely enough, an integral part of these sprays is the infamous Little Red Tube that flies out of the nozzle if you look at it cross eyed (one of the 10 worst tools of all time).

4. Margarine Tubs with Clear Lids: If you spend all your time under the hood looking for a frendle pin that caromed off the pertal valve when you knocked both off the air cleaner, it's because you eat butter. Real mechanics consume pounds of tasteless vegetable oil replicas just so they can use the empty tubs for parts containers afterward. (Some of course chuck the butter-colored goo altogether or use it to repack wheel bearings.) Unlike air cleaners and radiator lips, margarine tubs aren't connected by a time/space wormhole to the Parallel Universe of Lost Frendle Pins.

5. Big Rock at the Side of the Road: Block up a tire. Smack corroded battery terminals. Pound out a dent. Bop noisy know-it-all types on the noodle. Scientists have yet to develop a hammer that packs the raw banging power of granite or limestone. This is the only tool with which a "Made in Malaysia" emblem is not synonymous with the user being maimed.

6. Plastic Zip Ties: After 20 years of lashing down stray hose and wiring with old bread ties, some genius brought a slightly slicked-up version to the auto parts market. Fifteen zip ties can transform a hulking mass of amateur-quality wiring from a working model of the Brazilian Rain Forest into something remotely resembling a wiring harness. Of course it works both ways. When buying a used car, subtract $100 for each zip tie you find under the hood.

7. Ridiculously Large Craftsman Screwdriver: Let's admit it. There's nothing better for prying, chiseling, lifting, breaking, splitting or mutilating than a huge flatbladed screwdriver, particularly when wielded with gusto and a big hammer. This is also the tool of choice for all oil filters so insanely located that they can only be removed by driving a stake in one side and out the other. If you break the screwdriver -- and you will just like Dad and your shop teacher said -- who cares, it has a lifetime guarantee.

8. Baling Wire: Commonly known as MG muffler brackets, baling wire holds anything that's too hot for tape or ties. Like duct tape, it's not recommended for NASCAR contenders, since it works so well you'll never need to replace it with the right thing again. Baling wire is a sentimental favorite in some circles

9. Bonking Stick: This monstrous tuning fork with devilish pointy ends is technically known as a tie-rod separator, but how often do you separate tie-rod ends? Once every decade if you're lucky. Other than medieval combat, its real use is the all-purpose application of undue force, not unlike that of the huge flat-bladed screwdriver. Nature doesn't know the bent metal panel or frozen exhaust pipe that can stand up to a good bonking stick. (Can also be use to separate tie-rod ends in a pinch, of course, but does a lousy job of it).

10. A Quarter and a Phone Booth: See tip #1 above.

* If it won't go - force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway....
mtpanorama is offline  
__________________
I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder

I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good, either
Quote
Old 4 May 2001, 12:56 (Ref:88851)   #2
Ray Bell
Veteran
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location:
Various parts of Australia
Posts: 2,221
Ray Bell should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
You left out pliers!

Universally acceptable at virtually all levels of maintenance and repair work, pliers are indispensible. And if you need to keep the list to ten, just include the pliers and forget the wire... with pliers you can get all the wire you need!

As did Eldred Norman, infamous racer of the fifties. Stuck in a bog on a lonely NSW road, he used pliers to cut the nearby fence, then he used the pliers to tie the wire once he'd caught the cow he was going to hitch up to the car to tow him out of the bog....

And then he used them again to cut some more wire when that didn't work, hooking it to a plug lead and wrapping it around one of the cow's horns...

Shame he couldn't use the pliers to get the cow out from between the trees where it jammed itself when it got him out of the bog, but he did use them to cut the wire free again.

Another use for pliers is in conjunction with sockets... but I have to illustrate this by including snow in the equation.

John O'Brien, Clubman racer in Sydney in the seventies, was caught in the snow in Victoria after moving there in the eighties. He had no snow chains and was on a deserted road. His pregnant wife was with him.

He cut the fencing wire, as is always necessary, and used sockets as he wove up a set of snow chains with the sockets providing the necessary bulk.

He finished up with a lot of rusty sockets, but he, his wife, and his baby, are alive.
Ray Bell is offline  
Quote
Old 4 May 2001, 19:46 (Ref:88980)   #3
SL
Veteran
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location:
Crawley England
Posts: 1,701
SL should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
Duct tape is good, but in the avition industry there is this stuff called 'speed tape', like dust tape but stickier. Engineers use in on aircraft like mechanincs use duct tape on cars.

Once on it will NOT come off EVER. Except perhaps when using the large flat blade driver with slab of beside the road rock method as described above.
Simon
SL is offline  
Quote
Old 17 May 2001, 02:09 (Ref:93440)   #4
smiffy43
Rookie
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location:
Wales
Posts: 33
smiffy43 should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid

in my opinion the best tool of all time is a crack bar(knuckle bar) you can do virtually anything with em ,handy for getting exhausts off ect.and pretty cool if someone annoys you! also good as a hammer.
smiffy43 is offline  
Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 21:36.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Original Website Copyright © 1998-2003 Craig Antil. All Rights Reserved.
Ten-Tenths Motorsport Forums Copyright © 2004-2021 Royalridge Computing. All Rights Reserved.
Ten-Tenths Motorsport Forums Copyright © 2021-2022 Grant MacDonald. All Rights Reserved.