These Are The Tools That Changed My Wrenching Life

I have thrown away probably two dozen cheap spotlights and headlamps over the years. Lights that fail, or run out of AAs when you need them are a waste of plastic. Finally, I found garage-specific line of lights from Streamlight and I bought all of them. You might say their marketing department got me, but these lights seem get a lot of hard use and don’t smash apart when I drop them. They’re rechargeable and have good strong magnets that actually stick to cars when they’re dirty. They’re even easy to clean. Having reliable lighting is critical and when I got these home it felt like I’d solved a problem that’s been bugging me for years.

Shop Streamlight: Amazon

One thing Streamlight doesn’t offer, is a foot operated floor light.I actually haven’t been able to find on of those anywhere, so I built my own. It’s a small toolbox on tiny casters with cheap off-road lights bolted on either side of a 3D-printed Milwaukee 12V drill battery receiver. That little black thing on the bottom is a foot switch. When you’re working underneath a car, the light is massively useful — just don’t look down at it.

This is another expensive tool that may seem like a waste of money...until you encounter a rusted fastener, then it’s like having a magic wand. I bought this when I was removing the heat-exchangers from my 911. The deal there, is if you break a fastener, it’s engine out and off to the machine shop, or you buy some totally wacky repair kit thing from Pelican Parts. So, the Mini Ductor is an inductive heater. You insert a little shapeable coil into one end, then put that coil around any ferrous object and pull the trigger. The coil never touches the object, but within seconds, the it’s glowing white hot and any grip it had on its former home is gone. There’s no fire, so you don’t have to worry about catching oil on fire, or catching plastic/rubber parts in the torch zone. It’s incredible. People now bring rusty things to my shop to get them unstuck, which I guess is kind of a pain in the ass.

Shop the Induction Innovations Mini Ductor: Amazon

My best guess is that I found this in an old toolbox somewhere. I didn’t even know the name of it until a friend looked it up last winter. It’s a Lady Foot, I guess? People call them pry bars too, but I use this thing to bend and shape metal, to align bolt holes, to pry and lift, etc, etc. It’s one of the most useful tools in my garage.

Shop Lady Foot pry bars: Amazon

DT once called learning to weld a super-power, and I think that’s about right. This little Millermatic 141 has been absolutely life-changing as far as what I’m able to build and repair in my little shop. I’m not a great welder or fabricator, but I’m figuring it out little by little, which is satisfying in its own right. I will say, I wish I’d stepped up to a model that can run on either 110V or 230V. This one has never been short on power, but there are jobs that I’ve passed on because I knew I didn’t have the zap. Still, this machine has been hugely capable, and I’ll probably hold onto it even if I upgrade down the road.

Shop the Millermatic 141: Amazon

This one is obviously going to be out of reach for a lot of people due to the amount of space and money it takes up. (They are often available on local classified sites and they aren’t too to install if you’re patient.) But, as you would imagine, they’re very useful. It is obviously nice to be able to stand under your car instead of laying on your back under jack stands. But the bigger benefit in my experience is being able to quickly and easily check things out. It’s saved a ton of guess work and helped me catch a lot of issues before they got bad. It is another thing that seems to attract people, I’ve had other people’s cars on the lift more than my own so far.

Shop car lifts: Amaz0n

The second time I raced the Lada, we decided to cut the springs, which is dumb, but the car was very tall on the aftermarket Alfa springs we’d adapted for it. After several hours with the Sawzall, I called my cousin, who generally knows what he’s doing when it comes to metal things. I asked him what kind of blade I should be using to cut car springs and he said something to the effect of “go buy an angle grinder, dummy.” My family wasn’t a wrenching family, and I had never used an angle grinder before that. But the ability to cut metal like it was paper changed the way I see the world. It took me years and a few gruesome videos and photos to start (mostly) wearing the correct PPE when using a grinder, I would recommend starting your angle grinder journey with a walk down the face-shield aisle.

Shop DEWALT angle grinders: Amazon
Shop face shields: Amazon

As mentioned in the previous slide, it took me a long time to figure this out. I used to wash my hands with brake cleaner, which is monumentally stupid. I used to grind without a mask, paint without a mask, and drill sharp metal parts without a vise. I have a lot of scars, me hearing is probably worse than it was and who knows, I may have a cancer diagnosis in my future, which will be a bummer. All of that is avoidable with a small investment in PPE. Look up what OSHA requires pros to wear and buy it. It’s almost all cheap.

I burn through those rubber gloves like they’re made of Kleenex, and if I buy Mechanix brand gloves again, they’ll be of a beefier variety — the ones pictured above do not offer much protection from heat. But still, even if I forget about the safety benefits, they do make washing up a lot easier and mostly keep your hands from forming little cracks that you can’t ever get clean.

Shop Mechanix automotive PPE: Amazon
Shop heavy duty rubber gloves: Amazon

This one will also be controversial, but over the last decade or so, I’ve been replacing the old craftsman tool set my parents bought me for my birthday when I first started working on cars with better, mostly American-made tools. There are still times when I buy stuff at Harbor Freight, mostly because they’re the only tool store that’s open late-ish around here. But, for the most par, if I’m buying a hand tool, it’s coming from Wright Tool in Ohio. I have some Wera stuff, and was previously in the habit of buying S-K, but I’ve given up on them since they started producing a line of tools overseas. I know they still make a lot of stuff in the US, but I don’t want take the time to learn about their various lines. I’d rather buy from one company that I know makes high quality stuff here.

My main motivation for this isn’t supporting American manufacturing, though that is part of it. It’s that better tools actually work better. I didn’t believe this until Autoweek’s Wesley Wren demonstrated it to me, but tools that are built to tighter tolerances fit fasteners more tightly and are less likely to deform under hight loads, which means they don’t slip off and round fasteners as often. Again, hard to believe, but I don’t think I have rounded a fastener with American-made tools. How much would you pay to never have to deal with that again?

And yes, I know some store-brand tools perform really well in the tests on YouTube. And I know that in many cases, the tools you buy at a big box store might be made by a reputable manufacturer under contract. But again, I’m not going to spend a ton of time researching which cheap tools work well when I could just spend a little more to support a company that makes things in a town I could drive to.

Finally, I know some people are going to say I should just buy Snap-On or Mac tools. I have acquired some of their tools via eBay and the odd garage sale and they all seem great. But, do you have to have the truck visit you or can you buy them online, or how does that work?

Shop Wright Tool wrench sets: Amazon
Shop Wright Tool socket sets: Amazon

That more or less does it for my list. What about you? What tools have changed the way you work on cars over the years?