Triumphrat

mglemans86

Tools.
Drill Press: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat bar stock out of your hands, striking you in the chest and flinging your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted part on the workbench.

Wire Wheel: Cleans paint off bolts and throws them under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and guitar calluses in the time it takes to say "ouch!"

Electric Hand Drill: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

Pliers: Used to round off bolt heads. May also be used to create blood blisters.

Hacksaw: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija Board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion and the more you attempt to influence its direction the more dismal your failure becomes.

Vice Grips: Generaly used after pliers to further round off a bolt. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

Oxy-acetylene Torch: Used almost exclusively for lighting various flamable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for setting fire to the grease around that wheel bearing you were trying to remove by heating the hub.

Whitworth Sockets: Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles. Now mostly are hammered over bolts previously rounded by vice grips.

Hydraulic Floor Jack: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after installing new brake shoes, trapping the handle firmly under the bumper. May also be used to lower vehicle onto the plastic pail you drained the engine oil into, immediatly prior to moving the vehicle and spilling oil all over your concrete driveway.

Two by Four: An eight-foot long bar made of wood used for levering the vehicle upward off the hydraulic floor jack handle.

Tweezers: A tool for removing 2X4 splinters or wire wheel wires from your fingers.

E-Z Out Bolt and Stud Extractor: A tool 10 times harder than any known drill bit that snaps off in bolt holes. Works well in inexpensive or easy to replace parts but using this tool in expensive parts will cause almost certain failure.

Two-Ton Engine Hoist: Used for testing the tensile strength of electrical wires, hoses etc that you forgot to disconnect.

Craftsman 1/2 X 16 inch Screwdriver. A large prybar that inexplicably has an accurately machined flat tip at the opposite end to the handle.

Aviation Metal Snips: See "Hacksaw."

Trouble Light: A very appropriately named tool. Its two main purposes are to shine an intense light directly into your eyes instead of onto the part you are trying to illuminate and also to consume 40 watt light bulbs at the same rate as a 105 mm Howitzer consumes shells. Sometimes called a drop light for reasons obvious to anybody who has used one.

Philips Screwdriver: Normally used to stab the silver vacuum seals under the srew off lids of oil cans but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out the heads of phillips screws.

Pry Bar: A tool often used to crumple the metal surrounding a clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace that 50 cent part.

Hose Cutter: Used to make hoses too short.

Hammer: Originally used as a weapon of war, but nowadays used as a device used to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the part you are trying to hit.

Utility Knife: Used to open boxes and slice through the contents of packages delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on items such as seats, CD's, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines etc. Especially useful for slicing through work clothes, but only when you are in them.

Dammit Tool: Any tool that gets thrown across the garage as you yell "Dammit!" It is also the next tool that you will need.

Expletive: A soothing balm, or mechanics lube, usualy applied verbally and in hindsight, which somehow eases the pain and embarrasment of our lack of foresight.



[ This message was edited by: mglemans86 on 2007-01-17 13:07 ]

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Piles of Miles with Smiles

Nochicanes

how about Dremmel tools, that'l really pissoff the family

it always got me on the second molar though...weird...after about 10 minutes it would start being irritated :razz:

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R100Pilot

Sounds like you've been hanging out in my garage.

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"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
— HST

Big_Rick

Whew!!
I'm glad to know that I've been using my tools exactly as they were meant to be used.

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Some people are a lot like Slinkys.
Not really good for anything, but bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

bigern2300

You forgot the third purpose of a droplight: A device designed to quickly sizzle the skin on your face and/or arm while you lay hopelessly trapped under the dash and floorboard area of the vehicle! :razz: Bigern

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Life's too short to ride Jap bikes!

steventhechef

:-D :-D :-D :-D mglemans86

I have all of those tools and (at least now) know that I use them in the fashion that they were designed!!

One more -

Electric wood planer - a high speed tool used to shorten electrical leads to an unusable length whilst extinguishing the drop light.

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steventhechef

Eggs & Bacon. A day's work for a chicken, a lifetime commitment for a pig.

Silverado57

Good one Mr. LeMans. :-D

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Kevin
Luceo Non Uro
NJ USA

Wombat

A few more to add to the list:

Forget the Snap-On Tools truck; it's never there when you need it.
Besides,there are only ten things in this world you need to fix any car or bike, 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 one easy-to-carry package. Sure,
there's a prejudice surrounding duct tape in concourse competitions,
but in the real world everything from Le Mans-winning Porsches to Atlas
rockets uses 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, bailing wire
twister, breaker-off of frozen bolts, and wiggle-it-till-it-falls off
tool.The heavy artillery of your toolbox, 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,
alternators, and other squeaky items. Slicker than pig phlegm. Repeated
soakings of WD-40 will allow the main hull bolts of the Andrea Dorea 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 ten 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 peedle 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 altogetheror 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 nosy 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 India" emblem is not synonymous with the user's maiming.

6. Plastic Zip Ties: After twenty years of lashing down stray hoses and
wires 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 rewiring from a working model of the
Brazilian rain forest into something remotely resembling a wiring
harness. Of course, it works both ways. When buying used cars, subtract
$100.00 for each zip tie under the hood.

7. Ridiculously Large Standard Screwdriver With Lifetime Guarantee: Let's
admit it. There's nothing better for prying, chiseling, lifting,
breaking, splitting, or mutilating than a huge flat-bladed screwdriver,
particularly when wielded with gusto and a big hammer. This is also the
tool of choice for oil filters so insanely located 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 or your shop teacher said-
who cares? It's guaranteed.

8. Bailing Wire: Commonly known as MG muffler brackets, bailing wire
holds anything that's too hot for tape or ties. Like duct tape, it's not
recommended for concourse contenders since it works so well you'll never
replace it with the right thing again. Bailing wire is a sentimental
favorite in some circles, particularly with the MG, Triumph, and flathead
Ford set.

9. Bonking Stick: This monstrous tuning fork with devilishly pointy
ends is technically known as a tie-rod-end separator, but how often do
you separate tie-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 used 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 #1 above.

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Bob

Click to see My Photo Album

Age is of no importance, unless you are a cheese.

wenzel850

mglemans86,

Mike, did you have a little extra time today? Well I for 1 am glad you did. I enjoyed your expose of tools.

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Quentin

"01-20-2009 I can't wait"

Nochicanes

Man, I forgot THE most important tool I ever found while apprenticing on Alfa's...

The Italian Tuning Hammer

equally good for the throw like open end wrenches however it will not stick into drywall like the old 22mm snap-on...

and those welders....I must have gone through 20 pair of Levi's using those things, course they were doubling as shop rags as well so they were due for the garbage anyway....

Drill presses were particularly good, especially when you're in a hurry and you don't clamp the work down and the piece spins around and slams into your knuckles.

Wrenching sure is fun....

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I'm old enough to know the score
Young enough to want more, more, more