Welcome to Wrenching Wednesday, our weekly just-for-Members feature where you can get together with The Autopian gang and your fellow members to talk about all things wrenching. What you’re working on now, projects coming in the future, your latest triumphs and greatest challenges–if it involves spinning a wrench or twisting/pushing/pulling/squeezing any other implements you pluck off of a pegboard or pull out of a toolbox, this is the place to talk about it.
And speaking of reaching for tools… what do you reach for when the task at hand is farther than a walk to the garage or the car-shaped bare patch under your shadiest tree? I’m not-young enough to remember when there were two or three flavors of portable steel toolboxes and that was it. Each was just a big ol’ rectangle, and you either lifted out a tray to get to a main compartment; or lifted a multi-tier tray thing on parallelogram links that displayed all your fuses and nuts and bots and whatnot (that mechanism fascinated kid-me); or you had a lidded top and a drawer-front setup–convenient, but man, was it heavy. For me, anyway. Dad had no problem.
The big brains rejected this as the top shot. It is kinda dull though, so you win, big brains. But I’m using it here. Hmph.
Today, there are all kinds of tool-toting solutions to choose from. You can go with a semi-rigid pocketed carrier, a compartmented backpack, giant clamshell bags, a hardshell rolling box, one of those bucket-sleeve things (which seem more like a plumber/drywall guy thing to me, but maybe you love ’em), you name it… the sizes, colors, and styles are endless. Let’s talk about how you prefer to get your gear from A to B, and anything else wrenching-related you want to get off your toolchest. Ah, now that’s clever writing. So good.
Update on the LJ:
After replacing the fan clutch and the radiator with “better” parts, I think I conquered the overheating issues, only to have all 4 O2 Sensors start throwing codes at me and lighting up the CEL.
Since this is something I fixed for O2 1, bank 1 last December, I take it personally.
Knowing that all 4 sensors didn’t spontaneously fail, the internet told me that it’s either a common ground problem, or the PCM is about to fail.
So I found ground #G105 on the block and cleaned it up, cleared the codes, and now I’m playing the waiting game to see if they’ll come back.
In the meantime, during the overheating fight, I discovered my AC isn’t blowing cold, so I got two cans of refrigerant from Amazon, including one that has leak-sealer in it. I also need to replace the blower motor resistor.
That’s what’s going on this coming weekend.
I have two of these Stanley toolboxes. They might not be the bombproof metal ones of yore, but I love that the latch is super easy to open and close and they’ve stood up to my abuse for quite a few years now. One of them has some heavy stuff like breaker bars and dead blow hammers in it and other than a crack in one of the top compartment lids that happened when I got caught in a horrible hail storm with it in my pickup bed (the truck required something like $8000 of body work afterward) I’ve had no trouble with them.
I also have an old Husky toolkit in a blow-molded case that I’ve had to repair multiple times because the latches keep breaking off. Between that and my Stanley box I can do just about any regular job.