Mechanics: what are your most common tools?

Curious — Does Snap-On require proof of purchase, or do they look you up in a database? Or are they like Sears used to be, no questions asked, no fuss replacement?

There’s a YouTuber who’s furious at Harbor Freight because their Ikon Tool Lifetime warranty requires proof of purchase, and who saves all that?

 

People who want to use the warranties, they save the paperwork.

If they tool says SnapOn, they'll replace it. I've never had a problem with SnapOn, Mac, Or Matco for
replacing broken tools. Sears, WHAT A PAIN! Someone who doesn't know what the tool is "inspects" it to
see if the tool was used correctly. Then if they "feel" it was, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, and then they
replace it and make you feel you are steeling from sears!!!!

 

1. Buy Harbor Freight tools
2. Break them
3. Make angry YouTube videos about replacement policy
4. Use YouTube money to buy Snap On, Matco or SK

 

That's a bummer. I've used Craftsman hand tools at work and at home for over 40 years. I've only had two or three of them break, but each time, it was no questions asked. They took the old one and handed me a new one. I know one guy who didn't know what MEK would do to plastic screwdriver handles. He took back his handleless screwdriver, told the clerk what happened. He said the clerk told him, "You're not supposed to do that," and gave him a new screwdriver.

Edit to add, power tools can be a different story.

 

I stopped going to them about 20 years ago, maybe longer.
Maybe they changed.
I used my tools 5-6 days a week, all day long. craftsman tools didn't hold up.
The chrome chipped off, into my fingers, they broke, or rounded out.
They are fine for part time use, but everyday all day, nope.

 

The thought of having enough MEK around to do... that... outside of a lab environment kind of gives me the jibblies.

That stuff is just nasty.

 

Back in the day, we used if for cleaning just about anything that was oily or greasy. The guy with the screwdriver was doing something pretty dumb. He was in the barrel room, trying to reach something up high by standing on the removable lid of a 55-gallon barrel of petrolatum. The lid slid off and he plunged one whole leg into the almost full barrel. Once he extricated himself (thankfully without injury to the area you'd expect to be injured), he took off the petrolatum covered boot and threw it along with the screwdriver that he'd been holding into a bucket of MEK and went to the locker room to change clothes and clean up. He said that when he got back to the barrel room, the screwdriver handle was gone and all that was left of the boot was the metal shoelace eyelets.

Yup, very nasty stuff, and I think it wasn't long after that that it was banned.

 

Having never watched Robocop back when it came out (even living in real-Detroit at the time and knowing it was set in pretend-Detroit-played-by-Dallas), I've just watched it. Hence, I now have a nice vivid image to go with a good MEK story.

Yuck.

 

Oh yeah, Emil's demise was one of many shocks in that one.

 

Back in the MEK days, our factory hired college kids in the summer for unskilled work. We called them "summer help." One of my fellow electricians used to say, "Summer help, summer not." Anyway, one of these kids was mopping the scrap aluminum briquetter room floor. Oily aluminum dust is kind of clingly. Having discovered what a good cleaner MEK was, he used that to make sure it was nice and clean. He was wearing tennis shoes when he started. Before he was done, the shoes had no soles, just the uppers flopping on his feet.

 

I don't know what happens with Craftsman tools now that Sears is no more, but a few years back I got a new 4ft T-square to replace the old one that had become very sloppy. I had no paperwork for the original purchase.

 

I guess you've saved me the trouble of asking just how you defined "unskilled work".

 

I believe ace hardware and kmart, if they are still around, have bought there tool section.
I don't really know, or care.
I don't use my tools that much anymore, and "IF" they break (brake?), I'll KNOW I will have no problem
getting them replaced from SnapOn.

 

I worked in chem labs many decades ago, and I still come across products whose smell certainly reminds me of MEK -- but maybe there are other products with a very similar smell.

 

If you’re a pro mechanic, you break tools. These were the expensive Ikon tools, which HF positions directly against Snap-On, for professional use.

If HF wants to offer something as good as Snap-On, their warranties need to be as good.

 

40-years ago, when I drove Chevy's and Pontiacs, had a bunch of tools and seemed to always be busy setting the timing or changing out parts or troubleshooting problems.
Today, owning 3 Toyota's, seems I've been demoted to lube-boy....changing fluids and the occasional brake job. (In the past 16-years, I've only had ONE "check engine" light and that was because I got a little too much water inside the engine bay when washing the car.)
So for oil/tranny/differential fluid changes, have the normal stuff: metric sockets (14mm; T10 Hex; 24mm; etc.) various oil cannister/filter wrenches; a stash of gaskets for oil changes as well as a stash of various crush washers for differentials; a 1-gallon pump sprayer that's very handy for refilling transmission fluid; small, medium, and large torque wrenches, and a bunch of specialized tools for doing brake jobs. (I don't mess with rotors, just replace rotors with new ones whenever the pads need replacing.)
I'm the "family mechanic" so also do maintenance/repair on four other cars owned by our daughters and husbands so that helps keep me busy. Over the past few years, they did get rid of the very old Honda Odyssey van that was starting to be problematic and also the very old Saturn that was a huge pile of crap and replaced with a Mazda and Suzuki Sx4 that are very well built and reliable. (So far!)

 

Something I've been thinking about, a restraining arm for the crankshaft pulley:



Removal of the central bolt can be accomplished with an impact wrench, that jolts the bolt repeatedly, so fast that the pulley's inertia can't keep up with the bolt rotation. Or you can put a wrench and socket on it, restrain the wrench arm against something solid, say the transaxle drive shaft just aft, and have someone momentarily start the engine.

And you can reverse the above processes, to install and torque the bolt, but: it's difficult to achieve the spec'd 140 foot pound torque by those method. Maybe, with a torque stick on an impact, but I've heard even with calibration it's not that accurate.

Anyway, I've sorted out the critical dimensions of a DIY version of the SST's Toyota calls for. This is Mark III, third version. First version had the bolt holes too far apart, second too close, and third was Goldilocks:



The central hole is 1 3/8" diameter, sufficient for a heavy 19 mm impact socket, with some leeway. The two satellite holes are 3/8" diameter, slightly oversized for M8X1.25 (coarse thread) metric bolts (crankshaft pulley has corresponding threaded holes). The optimum c/c for the smaller holes is 86 mm, 43 mm either side of the central hole.

I'm using 3/8" (x 1 1/2") plywood for the template, but for an actual arm I think something like 1x3 pine (.75"x2.5") would be suitable, without being too cumbersome. I'd also speculalte that drilling the 3/8" holes to maybe 1", plugging the hole with a hardwood dowel and drilling that out to 3/8", might make it more durable. For 3/4" material, 50 mm bolt length seems suitable. I'd recommend to put a close-fit washer under the head.

The arm length needs to be sufficient to pass something solid, probably the aforementioned drive shaft, just aft.

 

Something like this can be very versatile, not limited to one spacing for the bolts.

The one I have was store-bought, decades ago, but in 20 pages of Google image results I can't find anything like it. It's almost this exactly, but instead of holes in the ends, it has carved-out notches, oriented the way the force would be applied. So you don't have to put bolts through it. You could just run a couple stubby ones into the pulley, and put the tool on them.

I've used it for holding or turning any number of things that weren't flywheels or crank pulleys.

 

Yeah that is a more flexible approach, and eloquent, for sure. I guess my logic with a purpose-built approach is that I might never need this on another vehicle. Or even the Prius lol. Also, it’s fairly trivial to bang one out, a few minutes with a saw, a few more with the drill press

 

I've been looking at those QuickJack garage jacks many folks are now using. With modern cars being so darn low to the ground these days, even driving up on a ramp can give you problems as the trim around the car can push it away before the tire is on it. And many of the maintenance jobs require the car to be level so even if you have ramps you still have to get the rear raised up.