anyone else find buying tools addictive?

[s130]

Any beyond buying there making your own tools.

I hoard all sorts of rubbish. Old hose sections, battery caps, gudgeon pins, nut, bolts, tubes, old cam belts, old bushes, old bearings, etc. etc.

Need a clutch alignment tool. Make it. This is where copper tube or 1/2 inch socket drive extension, old bits of hose, electrical insulation tape ..... can make a perfectly good clutch plate centralisation tool.

Need to drift or press out an item. Then those old bearings, gudgeon pins can come to the rescue.

I liken the tool making / saving day option to that which Apollo 13 had. What have you got (rusty old rubbish) and what do you need? If you have nothing in the box then you can't make anything you need.

On a twin cam engine you need a camshaft lock to undo the cam nut. As a last resort if you have an old cam belt then you can "figure-of-eight" lock the cam pulleys together with an old cam belt and mole grips. Not ideal but it does work.

So I make a permanent habit of not discarding old items and put them to one side for potential use. This applies to not only car originated items but to everything in the house. I will strip old appliances for cables, internal wiring and spade connections, fuse blocks, etc. Furniture gets inspected and stripped for potential future problem solving solutions.

I think what we would ideally like is the "Star Trek" replicator. The nearest I can get is based on old bits and bobs and some ingenuity.

 

[The Panda Nut]

May have just bought the digital scope that Aldi are currently selling on a deal for £40 expect me to be pulling out glow plugs soon to have a look at the pistons on the punto to see what they look like after 175k miles

Thank you all of you, I can stop questioning my own sanity now I know there are others with similar afflictions. My trouble is I have so many 13mm combination spanners I cant find the other sizes. I MUST do a car boot and get rid of some of the excesses.

There is no doubt however that a decent tool set makes jobs much easier than faffing with the wrong tools and busted ones butcher'd to make diy specialist tools! Not that sometimes this won't get you out of trouble.

Did a radiator swap on our old Seat by the road side last week and thanked God for the lack of air con on it, as the whole thing was done from under the bonnet. Now one of the somewhat pointless quick release hose connectors is leaking... Quick release my ****. I ended up taking the hoses off and getting these things off once the rad was out!

Thanks ever so by the way to the man at Seat who wouldnt give any helpful adviceas "something might go wrong and we would be liable".. Words fail me.

I think on the QT that we are all just a bit mad on this forum, and all the better for it!!!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Any beyond buying there making your own tools.

I hoard all sorts of rubbish. Old hose sections, battery caps, gudgeon pins, nut, bolts, tubes, old cam belts, old bushes, old bearings, etc. etc.

If you have nothing in the box then you can't make anything you need

I'm obviously "infected" with the same illness. Mrs J jokes to her friends that all our married life we've been fortunate enough to have a garage but she's never been able to put a car in it because it's so full of Dad's "useful stuff" she says that if I die first she's going to invite all my mechanic friends round and tell them that if they'll promise to help keep her car running they can take their pick of anything else, tools included, in the garage - The rest is all going in a skip!

Here's a small selection of some of the more presentable things I've made over the years:



Starting top left is a radiator pressure testing cap. To it's right is a light duty hub puller. Back to the left is a hand filed open ender for use with a 1/2" drive, all hand filed - took a couple of days! (can't remember what it was made for - not used it in years) to it's right is a primary gear puller for Mini/1100/1300 (FWD BMC stuff) then 2 flex hose clamps then 2 bundy tube (metal brake pipe) bender forms and to their right two deep sockets - smaller for Mini, larger for Princess/Ambassador. Go back to the left side and there's two spring compressors with a valve spring compressor below them to the right two chain wrench oil filter removal tools The duplex one was a timing chain off my old 1275 cooper S. Next a sprocket holding tool and two brake tools - the smaller one to help tensioning brake shoes into place with the springs fitted, the other long one is for the old type twin piston calipers but it can work on sliding ones although it's actually easier to use a "C" or "G" clamp.

There are many more and lots of stuff which, like distance pieces used for pressing, are used and returned to the many tins of bits I've got lying about. Oh, and "saved "wire? I've got 2 big boxes of the stuff and inner tubes and old rad hoses and timing belts and fan (now we must call them auxiliary) belts and old ACR type alternators and electrical switches and ---- no I'll stop at that. Mustn't forget "dippy" though who is a large papier mache Dynosaur my youngest boy made for me at school:



He's now in his mid thirties and has two kids of his own. The boy that is, not Dippy. What he gets up to when the garage door is shut is up to him! Dippy hangs from a spare compressor pulley on an upper shelf and watches, critically, everything I do. So far he hasn't uttered a single criticism or word of advice, but I'm sure that day will come!

 

[g8rpi]

Tools, electronic test equipment, radiation detectors....
I do tend to buy quality for things I use frequently. For odd stuff I may try a cheap first. For example I bought a Lidl oscillating saw to try and while it was OK and proved the utility of these saws, it had clear limitations. I splashed out on a Dewalt 18V one and it is so much better. Multimeters have to be quality. I have 7 Flukes plus HP, Racal-dana and Solartron.
The used Fluke model 25s that are fairly common on ebay at the moment are a good buy. Make sure it's listed as working though. These are ex- RAF and very rugged and accurate. They have better specificaton than the current model 100 series.
6 oscilloscopes including a Pico technology Automotive diagnostic system which is awesome but I don't get to use enough (anyone with a tough electrial problem near Cambridge PM me).

Robert G8RPI

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Thank you all of you, I can stop questioning my own sanity now I know there are others with similar afflictions.

I think on the QT that we are all just a bit mad on this forum, and all the better for it!!!

If you call up "Pugglt" on the 'net it defines it as "Exhausted, done in, at a stand still" around here it also implies "a wee bit daft" too. So I find myself agreeing with your opinion as it applies to me anyway.

By the way I also hate these quick fittings on rads don't see the point of them as most people I know just pull the hoses. Although I did actually find them rather good on the clutch hydraulic fittings on the Punto this week just passed. Did occur to me though that if they leaked you can't just tighten them up a wee bit more like you can with a compression fitting as on brake pipes. Can you buy new "O" rings on their own? Bet not, they'll want to sell you the whole pipe?

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

including a Pico technology Automotive diagnostic system which is awesome

Oh boy, I'm green with envy.

 

[g8rpi]

Oh boy, I'm green with envy.

I've had the standard "electronics" Picotech kit for years but could not justify the price of the automotive kit. I lucked out on a used kit on ebay for £75. It came from a closed garage and was poorly described by a clearence company.
As you probably know, it's the software and automate tests that make the Automotive kit special. It's not just electrical faults either. Two clip-on leads and turn the engine over and it will give you the reletive compression of the cylinders for example. The automotive software won't run on the "electronics" 'scopes but even those re useful and will for instance decode CAN bus signals.


Robert G8RPI

 

[DaveMcT]

When you have a big, ridiculously tight axle nut, using an extension shaft supported on a jack DOES NOT help. The extension shaft simply springs so the applied torque gets reduced. The only way is a long and tough enough breaker bar that can put enough rotation force into the threads. If necessary, hire a 3/4" breaker bar and six point socket and hope the socket is slim enough to get fully on to the nut.

On a personal note, I think many axle retaining nuts are over-tightened. I had an Austin Mini where the front wheel fell off exactly because the retaining thread snapped off the CV joint. Thankfully, I was moving slowly and simply lost drive, but a few minutes before I had been doing motorway speeds.

If the threads on that Alko chassis axle (or any other stub axle) are "distorted" you MUST REPLACE replace the lot not just the nut. Maybe an engineer can do the calculations to tell us what torque should be used, because I suspect that 220 ft-lbs is the absolute max. Cranking it until the threads are locked risks them stripping out or (like my Mini) even worse.

 

[s130]

When you have a big, ridiculously tight axle nut, using an extension shaft supported on a jack DOES NOT help. The extension shaft simply springs so the applied torque gets reduced. The only way is a long and tough enough breaker bar that can put enough rotation force into the threads. If necessary, hire a 3/4" breaker bar and six point socket and hope the socket is slim enough to get fully on to the nut.

Would agree with 1/2 inch drive but with 3/4 inch it is a different ball game. Breaker bars are OK but there comes a point when the forces via the handle/breaker bar even slightly out of line will end in socket end side loading.

One needs either a decent 3/4 inch impact drive held absolutely concentrically and perpendicular and pushed hard in OR a method of removing any off axis loading on the socket. This is where the shortest extension possible supported by a jack or axle stand can help greatly. Clearing bodywork is also another extension requirement and again for tight nuts decent support is required.

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

When you have a big, ridiculously tight axle nut, using an extension shaft supported on a jack DOES NOT help. The extension shaft simply springs so the applied torque gets reduced. The only way is a long and tough enough breaker bar that can put enough rotation force into the threads. If necessary, hire a 3/4" breaker bar and six point socket and hope the socket is slim enough to get fully on to the nut.

On a personal note, I think many axle retaining nuts are over-tightened. I had an Austin Mini where the front wheel fell off exactly because the retaining thread snapped off the CV joint. Thankfully, I was moving slowly and simply lost drive, but a few minutes before I had been doing motorway speeds.

If the threads on that Alko chassis axle (or any other stub axle) are "distorted" you MUST REPLACE replace the lot not just the nut. Maybe an engineer can do the calculations to tell us what torque should be used, because I suspect that 220 ft-lbs is the absolute max. Cranking it until the threads are locked risks them stripping out or (like my Mini) even worse.

I understand what you're saying Dave, about the possibility of the extension twisting (Like a torsion bar in a suspension system) I've experienced that with 1/2" drive stuff but never with 3/4" and I've used this "axle stand" technique on many occasions. It is very important to get the thing directly in line with and well engaged onto the nut/bolt.

Mind you I don't work on anything really heavy - Cars, light trailers, and horticultural machinery are my main diet.

Strange you had that happen with the mini. I've seen that happen too but in the workshop as it's being torqued. Nut, complete with the stub of the threaded portion of the CV snapped right off - whole lot dismantled and new CV required!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

Having a general tidy up of some of the stuff lying about after the recent marathon service/clutch job on the Punto. As I'm putting my bleeding bottle away it occurred to me that this is actually the 3rd one I've made over the years:



This one was made from a used pitted olives bottle. They always succumb to corrosion of the lid (I've always been a messy pig with fluids. Paint, coolant, screenwash, oil, brake fluid - I'll make a mess with it) So no surprise the top is covered with brake fluid. It occurs to me though that if ever you wanted a demonstration to prove that brake fluid absorbs water (hygroscopic) the corrosion on this lid is surely proof positive?

 

[The Panda Nut]

Yes you can c get the O rings, as they were 17 years old I changed them both. Unfortunately the groove they fit in is formed by inserting a chamfered ring which forms the back of the groove. I noticed this was not fixed all the way round but presumed the fitting would still work the o ring doing its stuff and the fitting pushed on carefully. Alas it leaks, so I now have to do battle under the car to replace it, worst of all antifreeze at £10 per litre is bound to be wasted. Grr. At least the offending thing is only £5 on ebay. I may well get a proper VW one though just to be sure. The O rings still looked perfect. I do like the natty drain point, just a quarter turn to open and I think I can get a hose on this time when I drain down so should loose less fluid.

Interesting that when filling you just top up and put the cap on. Just one subsequent top up required. WHy you have to ask do some systems have to be bled, often repeatedly to achieve the same effect...

I am glad you Punto is back to health!

 

[DaveMcT]

Alas it leaks, so I now have to do battle under the car to replace it, worst of all antifreeze at £10 per litre is bound to be wasted. Grr.

You can drain coolant (or oil) and re-use it if the drain tray is clean.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Yes hope to do this but as it will be another roadside job I have to muck about with what is available. At the current cost of antifreeze I have every incentive to drain it carefully and take my funnels.

 

[DaveMcT]

Lidl have some mains powered impact guns for £40. The "torks" (apologies Top Gear) are something like 350 Nms. They wont suit professionals but could be handy for DIY. Just be VERY careful what setting you use when tightening. It's better to use an ordinary drill on a screw driver toque limit setting and finish with torque wrench.