Cars beget tools. There must be people who own cars and never need to turn a nut or squeeze something, but I can't imagine it. Tools are such a necessary part of car ownership that all new cars come standard with the tools required to change a tire, while upscale platforms often include well-thought out, conveniently packaged sets of wrenches, sockets and ratchets.
Many enthusiasts grow to care as much about the tools themselves as they do the cars they work on. There can be many reasons for this. The sense of empowerment that comes from having the ability to perform maintenance or make a repair is rewarding both inherently and in the sense of security it can bring.
Both genders can appreciate the feeling, but it seems to be an overwhelmingly male trait to form an identity around such capability. Another reason tools are loved is their continuity, like a dog that stays while relationships come and go. I have used the same hand tools, most given to me by my father, to work on the six cars I have owned-and many I didn't. The bulk of these tools were received around the time I began to drive, but some of the screwdrivers that reside in my toolbox now have been in my possession since I was five years old. My hands have grown to fit them. Good tools really are objects of desire, with the quality and purity of purpose of a racecar. Sometimes they seem as expensive as a racecar, too, but their usefulness will outlive the competitiveness of any car. Many of the machine tools that helped the United States win World War II are still around, having filtered down to everything from hobbyists to academic institutions training the next generation of engineers to small but cutting-edge aerospace R&D firms.
Presented here are a collection of tools that we find particularly elegant or indispensable. Hopefully, they will be useful, or at least interesting, to all of you.
Aircraft Spruce CatalogThe value of a tool is that it extends one's abilities. With bare hands, we cannot remove a bolt. With the right wrenches, it's simple. Tools, in a sense, are "attachments" for our hands, allowing us to do things we could not do otherwise. They make us more powerful, extending our world and multiplying the tasks we can perform. For the first tool to be highlighted here, we wanted something unique, little known and important enough to be worthy of being first; not the latest in mega-versa-grip wrenches or some nifty gadget to make bleeding brakes or changing oil more convenient. While searching through catalogs for such a tool, we came to the conclusion that one catalog was itself what we were looking for. A bible in light aircraft and experimental aviation circles, the Aircraft Spruce and Specialty Co. catalog is essentially unheard of in the automotive arena. Those car enthusiasts who are ready to move beyond bolt-ons should know about it, though. Want some aluminum tubing to make a strut tower brace? Some 4130 for a roll bar? Sheet metal and 57 different ways to bend, cut and join it? Plastics? Plumbing? Electrical? Welders? Do you want to make your own carbon fiber and Kevlar(tm) parts? Need fasteners? Do you want the most comfortable foam in the world to put on your seat? All that and more is in here. Not only are the materials and tools available, there are books on how to use them, even hands-on seminars in aircraft (Read: racecar) construction techniques. Oriented more toward new construction than repair, this catalog is a source for everything needed to move from mechanic to fabricator. Best of all, the 550-page tome is free, pleasing cheapskates everywhere. Who knows, if you're extremely unlucky, you may find yourself getting a pilot's license and building one of the experimental aircraft profiled in the front of the catalog. That hasn't happened to any of us yet, but such good fortune can be fleeting.
Raytek Minitemp(tm) MT4When pushing the limits of performance on any component, an essential piece of information is temperature. In the good old days, real sports cars came with coolant temperature gauges that read in actual units. My 1974 Fiat indicated both Celsius and Fahrenheit, as well as carrying English and Italian labeling. Racecars monitor temperatures everywhere: differential, transmission, engine oil and sometimes even dampers. Basically, anything that gets hot and matters.
Systems that monitor many temperatures continuously can be costly, but there are still many times that we, as enthusiasts, would like to check the temperature of a part on our cars. This month's tool is one of the easiest and fastest ways SCC's editors have found to do just that. The Raytek MiniTemp(tm) MT4 is an affordable, handheld, infrared pyrometer. It requires no physical contact with a surface and registers the temperature upon triggering. The MiniTemp(tm) MT4 has a laser sight and costs only a little more than the non-laser-equipped MiniTemp(tm) MT2. One fine point to recognize in using the MiniTemp(tm) MT4 is that its temperature reading pattern spreads at a 6:1 ratio with sighting distance (i.e., it is an oval 4-inches long when the MiniTemp(tm) MT4 is held 24-inches from the target). It is important to remember that even though the laser sight has "laser beam precision," the area of which the surface temperature is being measured is much, much larger. It can be tricky to sight onto a small object deep within an engine compartment. Other details to keep in mind are that the MiniTemp(tm) MT4 measures surface temperature, not bulk temperature, and it can't be used while a car is in motion. The peak operating temperature of a part such as a brake disc is better determined by another method. Given that, we've thought of a ton of uses and there are certainly thousands more we haven't thought of. Do you want to know how hot that glowing turbo is? How about finding a rich or lean cylinder, or determining the effect of an unbalanced, restricted exhaust manifold design? Shock absorbers can get hot, causing their performance to fall off. There are many things that one might not want to touch on a car. Electrical items are an obvious safety issue, while curing paint and bodywork will be damaged by putting a probe on them. This short list includes just a few uses. We have found the MiniTemp(tm) MT4 to be a versatile, easy-to-use, low-cost tool that does what it does very well.
Sir ToolsThere is a category of tools that often look strange, their use a mystery until they are seen in action. Then, one can see that they are perfectly and elegantly suited to their task. In fact, they are clearly the most convenient, or even only, means of accomplishing what they do. They are called special service tools.
On every car, a job requires them sooner or later and they are generally not found in the Craftsman catalog. One catalog that is filled exclusively with them is that of Sir Tools, a family operated business founded in 1974. John Sir owned a service station and foreign vehicle repair facility in El Segundo, Calif., and was persuaded by visiting tool distributors to manufacture the tools he had designed for his own use. Today, Sir Tools has a 45-page catalog of special service tools. Nearly every foreign marque is touched on, but especially BMW, Volkswagen and other European brands. Some highlights include a hub-and-bearing puller that allows the bearings of front- and rear-wheel-drive vehicles with independent suspension to be changed on the vehicle. It eliminates the necessity of disassembling the suspension and placing the uprights in a press, netting significant savings in time and equipment. Several pages of the catalog are given to cooling system pressure adapters, enabling one to find and fix leaks without running the engine and getting the system hot.
Noga Lisa-Burr Deburring SystemSawing, drilling, filing and almost any other procedure that cuts metal or plastic invariably leaves a burr. Whether it is a nasty, ragged edge or a smooth and nearly invisible sharpness, the burr presents a hazard to exposed flesh and clothing through the remainder of the object's construction, installation and use, not to mention that it is ugly and looks amateurish. Most enthusiasts working at home, if they think to remove the burr, reach for a sander, grinder or file. Unfortunately, these methods can scatter material and abrasive all over the shop, and leave their own burr or rough edge. Excessive application of power can sometimes result in removal of too much material. For most jobs, most of the time, the easy way to smooth edges is a NOGA Lisa-Burr deburring tool. It's another simple, relatively inexpensive tool that a metal fabricator will reach for continually. After being introduced to the Lisa-Burr at a prior job, I bought my own. There are several versions available, but I chose the most general version, consisting of a handle and reversible holder with quick-release ends for large and small cutting bits, five of each for general purposes being included. I expect this blade selection to last me, oh, probably forever.
The Lisa-Burr will take the razor edge off a 3-foot long piece of sheetmetal as quickly as you can move your arm and just as easily get into tight corners with awkward angles. The inside edge of tubing is a snap. Blades pivot in the holder, and can be used with a pushing or pulling motion. Depth of cut is controlled by a combination of the material's hardness and the force with which the tool is pressed against the work. If a snag is reached, the blade twists up and away from the workpiece, rather than digging in. The material removed usually lands nearby, rather than flying across the room. Acquiring the technique may involve a short learning curve, but it is natural and soon becomes automatic.
A vast array of specialized cutting heads and holders is available, as are various configurations of handles. The general purpose blades shown here are available ground for left-handed users, as well as with special coatings and constructions for tough materials.
UnibitDrilling a hole is probably the most common machining operation performed by an automotive hobbyist, and they are most often drilled in a thin material, such as sheetmetal. Typically, it goes something like this: The bit is working well, making chips and just as it is about to break through the back, the cutting edges grab the last of the metal and thread the flutes of the bit into the hole. One must pull the bit out and start over, hitting the burrs with some speed to break them off and make a hole that the drill bit can spin smoothly in. The result is a hole that is jagged and frustratingly triangular. A 1/4-inch drill bit never makes a hole in sheetmetal that can pass a 1/4-inch diameter round object, such as a bolt. Doing so requires using a larger bit, resulting in a sloppy, ugly hole.
There is a drill bit that makes nice, clean, perfectly round holes (not cylinder bore round, but good enough for a bolt to pass through), providing mild deburring or a 45 degree chamfer on the front side. The Unibit is a stepped drill bit, made specifically for thin sheet materials. Usually, one-size-fits-all tools are sloppy compromises, but the Unibit's only compromises are the thickness of the material and a limited range of sizes. Each of the several Unibit configurations provides a range of hole diameters, with various minimum, maximum, and incremental sizes.
The Unibit has a self-starting tip, or can also be started from a pilot hole made with a conventional drill. One simply works through the steps up through to the desired diameter, using the beginning of the next step to deburr the hole on the final size. Because so much of the tool is a solid surface, instead of multiple cutting edges as with a conventional drill, it may tend to make a burr on the back of the hole at each step, which becomes significant as it works through several steps to a larger diameter. This characteristic only becomes troublesome as a Unibit wears and becomes dull. Reducing pressure so the cutting edge does the work helps to alleviate the problem, but in any case, if the back of the work piece is accessible, it can be deburred with the Unibit simply by entering the hole from the other side. For a few dollars more, Unibits are available with a titanium nitride coating to extend their life. Cutting oil also helps significantly, though some consider it optional in thin sheet material. The mess it leaves could be a problem in many locations, though it does help hold the chips near the hole where they can be easily wiped away. It goes without saying that safety glasses are not optional. The Unibit became a tool in my box that is used far more than I ever expected. See if it is the same for you.