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| They're a little rusty and beat but they definitely get used! |
There are plenty of other heavy duty tools useful for all kinds of projects. Pry bars come in a variety of sizes but a few from 8″ to 24″ will take care of most jobs and often make smithereens out of whatever cheap metal piece you're attempting to pull apart. Punches work well for getting out bushings or roll pins. They come in different tips from a center punch with a tapered tip that help create a mark for drilling a hole into metal to a starting punch, which has a long taper from tip to end and can withstand heavy blows. These are good for removing bolts from their holes. Chisels are good grunt work aids. Files can be used for de-burring or chamfering sharp metal edges.
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| Looks like I need to give my Shop Vac a good cleaning itself! |
Masking tape and a felt tip marking pin help you label vacuum lines and wires. A magnet bowl can hold loose nuts and bolts so you aren't digging around trying to locate them when putting everything back together. And nothing cleans up spills like a bucket of kitty litter and some rags shop towels. Get a wet/dry vac: don't fool yourself. Mess happens, clean it up with ease. And whether you're trying to protect you manicure or just don't want to look permanently dirty, get some latex gloves to keep the grease from dyeing your skin.
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| This 40 piece carbon steel tap and die set is available at Harbor Freight for about $18. It includes 17 tap and dies in various sizes, wrenches, a screwdriver, and screw pitch gauge in a fancy little carrying case. It is available in both metric and SAE. Pick your poison! |
You're bound to strip or cross thread a few nuts and bolts when completing a car project so it's a good idea to have a tap and die set on hand. Tap and die sets are available in a number of sizes in both SAE and metric. A tap creates the female portion (into a hole) while a die creates the male portion (onto a rod). Using both sides to clean up a thread is called chasing. There are various versions of tap: the bottoming tap has little or no taper and is used to cut threads into a hole. The plug tap has between 3 and 5 tapered cutting edges and starts the initial tap into an untapped hole. The taper tap has a very prominent taper to the cutting edges (usually 8-10 tapered threads) and is usually used on metals that are more difficult to tap such as alloy steel. But because of their small diameter, they break more easily. To create threads in a hole, first redrill the existing hole. Then put the tip of the tap into the hole and turn it. For each 2-3 turns forward, do a half or whole turn backwards to clean the threads. Dies use a similar process but instead of a rod into a hole, they fit around a cylinder to clean up the thread.
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| Everything you need to bleed the brakes! |
Line wrenches are ideal for use on fuel, brake, and other hydraulic lines. They have a larger gripping area with one open end and one box end that can go over a line and grip all the sides of the fitting. 8-14mm is a good metric range of line wrenches to own. A vacuum bleed and test set will help with bleeding the brake system. It uses a handheld vacuum pump and comes with a plastic reservoir, hoses, and adaptors. Also helpful for brake jobs is a brake spreader, a small tool that will help push back the piston into the caliper so installing new brake pads is a breeze. C clamps can also be used to push the piston back. They're also good for holding two pieces together as you wait for adhesive to dry or to line up bolts before reattaching something. And if your car still has drum brakes (upgrade to discs…), some brake spring pliers can get those pesky springs reattached.
