Having a garage can be dangerous. No, I’m not talking about exploding cutting wheels and torching your eyebrows off, I’m talking about the litany of tools and projects you have the space to take on. Needless to say, I’ve had a few at the front of my mind.
Recently, I had the chance to get reacquainted with a hot staple gun. While that may sound like a torture instrument used by employees of, um, waste management, it’s actually a brilliant way to fix broken plastic pieces. Insert a staple into the gun, hold it against the plastic part, pull the trigger for a few seconds, and the staple melts into the plastic. Then just shear off the staple ends with side cutters and presto–Bob’s your uncle.
The result? A tie between broken pieces so sturdy, it makes zip-ties look like loose shoelaces. Look, the problem with a temporary drift stitch is that there’s room for things to move. The problem with epoxy is that the pieces can move while the epoxy is setting. Hot staples theoretically fix all of this, and a kit is now dirt-cheap. You can buy a hot stapler complete with staples for less than $30, which makes picking one of these kits up fairly worthwhile.
My other fascination? Partial-bypass pipes. Now, these aren’t entirely legal in most jurisdictions, but they’re pipes that let a small amount of exhaust gasses past the muffler, and can be put on valves to essentially act in a similar way to the mufflers on many modern performance cars. The result of well-tuned partial bypasses? Well, listen for yourself:
Yeah, of course I’d want my Boxster to sound like a cup car. Anyway, what are your latest wrenching obsessions? It can be tool-related, gear-related, or even part-related. I’m all ears.
(Photo credits: Amazon)
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“Anyway, what are your latest wrenching obsessions? It can be tool-related, gear-related, or even part-related.”
Is it ok if it’s only partly tool related?
I don’t have a garage. Just a small craft shop in the basement that doubles as storage and a laundry room.
My wife’s stepfather (who I adore) stopped by our place recently to lend a helping hand with a car issue.
While working on it he asked me if I had a particular tool we needed.
I do, I exclaimed proudly.
In the basement…
I do have that particular thingamagig we needed, but damned if I could find it.
So we made due without the proper tools for the job, despite the fact that said proper tools did exist somewhere within twenty five feet of where we were wrenching.
Long story short, I’ve bought some sections of pegboard and some sticks of one by two along with some plastic organizing accoutrements to spruce up the place.
One day soon, I’ll thank that seventy four year old man for that kick in the butt.
Next time we work on something together, I’ll know exactly where what we need is.
Sure I will.
Happy Thanksgiving y’all!
Replaced the wiper motor on my old Alfa Spider. The motor actually turned out to be ‘okay’ but since I’d already sprung for the new motor I put it in anyhow. The problem with the old one turned out to be 50 year-old grease hardening into an imitation of the LeBrea tar pits.
The old wiper motor actually worked but the wipers were so slow because of the hardened grease that, on high setting, the storm would be over before the wipers made a full pass and on slow, Hell, Rainy Season would be finished first.
I have the same problem with my GTV6!
The sun visor failed. How in the blue blazes does a freaking sun visor fail?!? So it was off to the junkyard to source a replacement.
While there I tried to get a trim piece that had become damaged. After trying to remove one, nope, that juice ain’t worth the squeeze. Plastic shards everywhere. So I’m living with a damaged one. That was a letdown.
The EFIE device for my CT125. Not the fuel injection- a Electronic Fuel Injection Enhancer. Designed for hypermilers, when wired into the O2 circuit, it leans out the mixture by acting as a resister and changing the voltage fed back to the ecu.
The honda CT125 doesnt have a fuel.management device available like the grom and monkey. By wiring this in backwards, the device will richen the mixture instead! So it moves from the factory 14.4:1 ratio to 13 or 12.5:1. Perfect for big bore kits, cams, etc. All for 31 dollars shipped. The factory self-learn takes care of everything. The only part that you cant change is the timing, but it works! The only other solution is a full ecu change for 25% the cost of the bike.
I replaced the dead fuel pump in my ’99 Corolla. Also replaced the inlet screen, fuel filter, and fuel pressure regulator at the same time, because they’re all in the fuel tank with the pump. Thankfully Toyota saw fit to put a hatch under the back seat, so I didn’t have to drop the tank.
I’m a little obsessed with the Ryobi 18V tire pump/inflator. It’s so much more convenient than a traditional compressor or the 12V plug-in inflator I was using before, and it has a digital pressure gauge so I don’t crash leaving a Cars & Coffee.
From a parts perspective, I realized that the next three projects I want to do involve discrete 1-, 2-, and 4-carburetor configurations (all on motorcycles). Might be a little obsessive.
Finally, I’m obsessed with ceramic coating for parts. I had an exhaust system and a bunch of other parts (e.g. kickstarter) done in a satin black ceramic coating and it is fantastic. There are a couple more exhausts that need to be done and I’m looking around the shop for other pieces to do. This is one of those jobs where the pricing is a nonlinear progression: one piece = expensive, but if you’re doing a lot of ’em the cost per part plummets.
The Ryobi pump inflator is great. Especially the one with both high flow and high pressure. Tires, pool floats, air mattress, inflatable islands, and even inflatable stand up paddle boards (with an adapter). They also deflate extremely well.
That’s right, you don’t want your left rear tire 1.5 PSI under the others.
It’s silly, but I love my fender cover. Pretty much anytime the hood goes up for anything more involved than checking the oil, that thing goes on, whether really needed or not.
I dunno, it just feels “mechanic” to me and makes me happy…in my mind’s eye, I always picture some vague old photo scene of a purposeful guy leaning over the engine bay of some old muscle car or something.
(I know, this had much more cool resonance before Vin Diesel scowled his way through the Fast n Furious series, but still…)
Not fancy, but I was just happy to finish putting the new exhaust system into my Defender recently. The perfect level of difficulty for a day spent in the driveway.
Tools. I’m a DeWalt fan, and after years of slowly collecting their tools, I finally picked up one of their battery powered ratchets – it is awesome. I did a quick repair on my sport quad right after I bought the ratchet, and between it and my DeWalt impact gun, what would have taken 20 minutes by hand took about 2. I’m about to do some CV axle boot replacements and am looking forward to how fast I’ll be able to remove/reinstall compared to the last time I did some.
I bought a battery impact gun (a Black and Decker, don’t judge me!) a few years back, and it works surprisingly well for me, as a less-hardcore wrencher.
I rekindled my love for my oil extractor last week after doing a “traditional” oil change on my ’18 S5. Figured it’s good to pop the belly pans off every once in a while and see what’s going on down there. Huge, messy waste of time. Ramps, a million fasteners, cruddy drain pans you have to pour into the new oil containers for transport back for disposal, drain plugs, gaskets. The drain plug is on the bottom of the flat pan, not on an angle like most, so just taking it out is a mess. It starts juicing as soon as you loosen it. At least my ratchet got oiled in the process? With the extractor I’m done in 10 min, I stay clean, and the used oil gets transported back in the sealed extractor. Easy, clean and fast.
I use a small one on gearboxes and differentials, keeping that smelly gear oil off me is priceless
I haven’t done much wrenching in the last few years, but a couple weeks ago I got back into it. The fire department I volunteer for has a small collection of antiques, and one of them needs a refresh on the engine. Another group of guys pulled the engine & transmission from a 1924 Graham, and myself and another guy extracted the cam & valves. The intake valves were all frozen or bent. This truck was purchased new by our department, so there’s a big push to have it running well for it’s 100th 4th of July parade. Should be epic!
https://www.cedarburgfiredept.com/antique-apparatus/
Since you’re not too far away, I’ll help you with your project if you help me with mine. 🙂 Sometime between Jan and Mar my car friends and I want to rebuild a spare B18C from an integra, a 13-B REW from an RX8, and a 2JZ from an is300 that we have as spares but know worked within the last 7 years when we pulled them from lemons / project cars. We’re very competent with cars, but have never needed to do a full rebuild before and might as well get some spares ready for the race cars when they eventually blow up / I like my project car too much where I don’t want to blow up the original engine…
I live in the Wrigley area of Chicago BTW so it’s not close, but not far.
Sounds like a ton of fun, but I think we have our hands full. This is the first rebuild I’ve been part of, so really I’m just extra hands, plus the only one of us who’s a pro wrench is out of commission for a while.
All that being said, I bet Mercedes would be interested in your project. I know I’d love to read about it!
Honestly? Aluminum bodies/chassis. I hate aluminum as a structural material, however its corrosion resistance is something that I do like.
Speaking of, Tesla should have made the Cybertruck out of aluminum instead of stainless. For all practical matters what advantage does stainless offer over aluminum for the Cybertruck? It already uses a lot of aluminum in its construction, it can polish up very nicely, in a decent accident the Tesla is already going to get totaled whether its stainless or not. I think Tesla would have saved a ton of time, money, and expense going with Aluminum over stainless.
I mostly agree with you, but just to play devils advocate, aluminum (aluminium for the bishop) is significantly more brittle under flex loads. It tends to snap instead of deform after a certain point. Second it’s far harder to shape except for gradual curves, and while stainless is harder to tig weld than mild steel, it’s still a lot easier than aluminum, and can be welded to mild steel parts whereas aluminum is incompatible.
Irrelevant on the Cybertruck because almost any accident is going to total it because of the fear most shops have about repairing cars/trucks with big-arse lithium batteries…. or and then there’s the “Rivian lesson” where denting the rear fender carries the problem into the whole body since the bed is not a separate piece. This is made worse by the fact nobody will work on stainless but is still would be bad enough if it were aluminum instead
I’ve pretty much memorized the repair recipe for water pump and thermostat on a 2017 Macan. Apparently they’ve all simultaneously failed ????
Do those use the EA839?
Sounds like water pumps and turbos for anything with the GM LUJ/LUV 1.4T (the port injected one). Those will all eventually fail. Decent engine IMO but not perfect.
Learning how to make your own parts out of fiberglass is hard… I’m still probably 3 weekends away from feeling like I’m ready to start making body panels which I expect to fail at the first 3 tries.
Other than that, I decided to postpone the fuel pump replacement in my RX8 until after I bring the car out of storage for the winter the day before the parts showed up.
Really not that tough a thing at all. Like life, there are a few tricks that make things easier.
I wish you luck.
Apparently you don’t have to be good at fiberglass body parts to get into the LA Auto show, so don’t worry too much.
I repaired a hole in my my rear running board panel with fiberglass on a V-50 R-design. It took a bit of time, wasn’t perfect, but no one would notice until I pointed it out.
I definitely “need” a hot staple gun for the next time one of the plastic trim pieces on my Saab breaks. I saw someone use one on a YouTube video recently and was mesmerised.
I feel like you could probably bodge a hot staple, by heating a bit of wire with a flame and then just jamming it into the plastic. Probably wouldn’t be pretty though.