Home-made Tools and those you've adapted or modified. And also "tips and tricks".

[daverclasper]

Loving this thread. Could the title also include "tips and tricks" (please, please sir).

Dave

Edited September 27, 2019 by daverclasper

[68vitesse]

Modified spanner for removing J type solenoid with gearbox still in the car.

Regards

Paul

[DerekS]

This is possibly an old chestnut but I've used the layout pictured for a lot of years to adjust the rear brakes on my Spitfire; brake adjusting spanners are a right pain to use. Using a small socket set with 3/8" and 1/4" drive, the aim is to end up with a 1/4" square "socket" that's a good fit on the adjuster. Basically it's a 3/8" drive ratchet, short extension, 3/8" to 1/4" adapter, 7mm x 1/4" drive socket, a 7mm x 1/4" allen key bit and a 1/4" drive x 1/4" AF socket. I'm sure that other arrangements would do the job. The allen key bit is Loctited in place to stop it dropping out. I keep a short length of tubing over the (well-greased) exposed threads of the adjusters, keeps them from seizing.  Half an hour spent putting these pieces together saves parping around with the usual brake spanners!

[JohnD]

Very smart!

Did you watch the Project Binky episodes where they made the aircon?  

  

See from 20 mins in

 

J.

[Colin Lindsay]

Starbucks or Costa Coffee - or in fact almost any coffee shop - next time you're in, lift a handful of the wooden stirrers. They're great for digging out old grease, prising trim off, stirring paint, mixing filler or cleaning out your ears. 

[poppyman]

2 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

Starbucks or Costa Coffee - or in fact almost any coffee shop - next time you're in, lift a handful of the wooden stirrers. They're great for digging out old grease, prising trim off, stirring paint, mixing filler or cleaning out your ears. 

Also good for picking your nose..... The one bit you can never reach.......

Tony.

[JohnD]

4 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

Starbucks or Costa Coffee - or in fact almost any coffee shop - next time you're in, lift a handful of the wooden stirrers. They're great for digging out old grease, prising trim off, stirring paint, mixing filler or cleaning out your ears. 

Really?   Costa must use superior stirrers.    Those in any coffee shop I patronise are barely able to stir a latte.  they would break up in paint or grease!

John

[Bfg]

On 27/09/2019 at 18:02, daverclasper said:

Loving this thread. Could the title also include "tips and tricks" (please, please sir).

Dave

Are you happy now ! ?  

[Bfg]

5 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

Starbucks or Costa Coffee - or in fact almost any coffee shop - next time you're in, lift a handful of the wooden stirrers. They're great for cleaning out your ears. 

um ?  .. car polishing wax ? or do you use it as a budget version of wax oil  ? 

[JohnD]

Oh!  "Cleaning out your ears".    My ENT surgeon's advice was never to put anything in your ear smaller than your little finger!

J.

[Colin Lindsay]

16 hours ago, JohnD said:

Really?   Costa must use superior stirrers.    Those in any coffee shop I patronise are barely able to stir a latte.  they would break up in paint or grease!

John

The stirrers taste better than the coffee in most, but go for the short stubby ones rather than the long thin ones - it may come down to the particular coffee shop but there are versions that are an inch shorter and a lot stiffer. I was mixing filler yesterday and they worked great. Of course you can always use two together for extra stiffness. You can also use wooden lollypop sticks, £1 for 50 in my local Poundshop.

Never thought of using ear wax as cavity protection, after all it comes from a cavity and my ears have never rusted... 

[JohnD]

Home made tool and we've got to ear cleaners.  Yeeuugggh!   Wooden ones too - what's wrong with a screwdriver, or a scriber for REALLY gummed up lugs?

Back to filler, the plastic spreader that comes with every pack works fine for me, scooping it out and mixing.   Clean it off after every use.

We had an adapted spanner above, this is mine for the most forward nut on the manifold of a six.    Unreachable by a socket and extension, no room for a ratchet up close, an ordinary length spanner is too long - the engine mount gets in the way - so cut one off, so it can be swung.     But then the narrow edge of the spanner is hard on the hands to get enough torque on the nut, so wire a length of copper tube over it, and cover the wire with tape.

The head is also ground down slightly for better access.

John

 

[JohnD]

Here's another favourite of mine, - a wheel rim width gauge.

The "J" spec on a wheel is the width apart of the rims, internally.     That's difficult to measure with a tyre on the wheel, but this pair of giant calipers makes it easy.    Constructed from wood laths and scraps, with a pair of nails glued to the tips, I calibrated it onto the card scale, 4, 4.5, 5, etc.  and checked it on a wheel of known size.    The caliper measures the outside of the rim so a small allowance has to be made for the thickness, which is greater on alloys.

Maybe not often used, but easy to make!

 

[Bfg]

.

Here's a 1100lb (500kg) motorcycle lift.  Unfortunately with a motorcycle's centre stand and other bits n' bobs protruding underneath - it never fitted the frame on either my BMW, my Norton, nor my Sunbeams. ie. it was useless.  In any case it would have been dangerously unstable and impossible to do basic tasks like changing the oil.  So I modified it with a 3/4" plywood crate so that it would lift under the motorcycle's tyres.   I include it here only because I'm thinking it might be adapted yet again to be a car lift ..but I'm not sure how it might best be used / useful  -  Any suggestions ? 

This is not exactly the same model, as mine is Clark branded, but aside from it's castors - it's very similar . .

                                 

And this is it modified and in use.

The crate I had from when I returned from living abroad, for scale it's 48" L x 20" W x 14" H.  The forward extension with uprights to clamp the front wheel is 25" long. I use a six foot long wooden ramp to push the bikes onto it. It's really not as hard work as it sounds as long as the bike steers, has air in the tyres, and the front brake works.  

How might I adapt this for when restoring an old car ?   Suggestions with a sketch would be useful..

Thanks. Pete

p.s. Garage Tip, seen in the background of this photo - The inside walls (and also most the ceiling) of my garage are lined with aluminium faced bubble wrap, which is of course a useful insulator, a waterproof membrane, and a clean finish and excellent reflector of light. 

[JohnD]

Here's another difficult access tool.     The Vitesse has, notoriously, very little space between the crank nose and the radiator.   If you want to turn the crank, say to set valve gaps, the crank pulley bolt is the best way to do so.    But a spanner, even the ring end, tends to slip off, and you cut your knuckles.    There's no room for a socket and ratchet

So I took a socket, drilled the side and cut a thread, in that and the end of a length of tube.      I now have a socket on a stick!   A deep socket might be a better one, if you have the fan still there.

The stick should have been longer, but that was the longest length of thick walled tube in my scrap box, so I threaded the other end for some threaded rod and covered the end of that with tape.

Voila!

John

[Bfg]

^ But how did you drill that big hole through what I assume to be a tool-steel socket ?

Wouldn't welding a tube on be easier ? 

[JohnD]

14 minutes ago, Bfg said:

.How might I adapt this for when restoring an old car ?   Suggestions with a sketch would be useful..

Thanks. Pete

Pete,

Same idea constructed for a small car, like a MINI.    Should work on a Triumph, one each side.

 

You might also watch this "Howei Didit" form the Bad Obession Boys (Boys!!!)  Theeirs is completely fabricated, save for a hydraulic piston, but the idea's  there.

 

John

[JohnD]

2 minutes ago, Bfg said:

^ But how did you drill that big hole through what I assume to be a tool-steel socket ?

Wouldn't welding a tube on be easier ? 

By my superior superpowers.     

Witha new bit in a pillar drill.    

John

[Bfg]

16 minutes ago, JohnD said:

Pete,

Same idea constructed for a small car, like a MINI.    Should work on a Triumph, one each side.

You might also watch this "Howei Didit" form the Bad Obsession Boys (Boys!!!)  Theirs is completely fabricated, save for a hydraulic piston, but the idea's  there.

John

Thanks John.  The Mini lift looks incredibly simple and aside from width and length is not that different from my bike lift, save the orientation of the jack.  Certainly two of the bike lifts would be capable to lift a Triumph sports car whose curb weight is under a tonne.   However the upright (actually about 45degree) orientation of the 3-ton jack under mine wouldn't work so well.  I might be better off buying a couple of low profile trolley jacks and using those with appropriately sized parallelogram frames.  

By coincidence I had seen the Howei video and dismissed it as being a massive amount of work ..even though they already have a beautiful workshop, a steel off-cut saw, a lathe ..and a steel-holder's stockpile.  Even then they bought in (or begged for free) what looks to be an expensive hydraulic ram + parts from jack stands and under wheel rollers.  And even then.. the boys didn't seem that impressive with the finished article.  Lessons to be learnt though, so thanks.

 

[Bfg]

.

Here's a few storage solutions put to good use in the garage. .

1.   Old laundry bin now used in the garage to keep discarded cloth, bed sheets, etc for use as rags.  

2.  The top, just loosely siting on the 'rag bin' is the top off a discarded washing machine. Having a 'table top' just inside the garage door has proved handy.  

3.  The ex-office waste paper bin is dedicated to wire wool, scouring pads, etc.  That is often hung off the floor, on a nail into the wall.  If wire wool or scouring pad is wet it dries out in that wire basket.

Btw.  The piece of 4"x 2" timber is an off-cut from a piece I needed the taper. However that taper is a convenient handle to use the block as a soft hammer, and at other times is used as a lever, and again at other times is simply used as a wooden block. 

 

Here's another simple storage solution for awkward stuff . .

The lengths of 1" square tubes were, I think, formerly legs for lightweight shelf racking. I'm not sure because I simply 'reclaimed' them from a skip down at the marina.  One end of these just rests on the wooden lintel / ledge over the garage door, and the other end is a 4" nail driven into the side of the roof beam, which the tube simply pushes over. It really couldn't be simpler or cheaper.  But as you can see on one tube ; there's a couple of spare vintage motorcycle tanks up there, out of harms way.  On two others, there's spare bits off my old Citroen. This includes a pair of rear wings, and exhaust pipe, door trim pads, a rear seat, pieces of bumper, and other things like hood irons.  That car has just sold so these things will be going soon    but the two tubes will remain ready for the next assortment of dismantled car parts.

And finally for today, another very simple, cheap, but oh so useful storage solution to blinking awkward things. .

This is a length of 1" round tube which again came from the skip.  One end of that rests on the top brick of the this sloping garage's wall.  And just above the blue lab coat and chamois leather you'll see a piece of cord going vertically upwards. This is simply tied around a nail in the wooden roof beam  ..and holds what is in effect just like a wardrobe's clothes rail at the right height to be level.  Again it couldn't be simpler nor cheaper.  And being in the back corner of the garage - it's out of the way and high enough to park a motorcycle under.

As you can see - I'm using it to hang all sorts of awkward things on,  like ;  a roll of oversized emery paper, different width rolls of self-adhesive neoprene (seals), rolls of velcro, electrical shink wrap tubing,  plastic tubes, loops of spare cord,  and plastic bags (hung on wire S shaped hooks) with more off-cuts of rope, another with offcuts of rubber and plastics, and another with short offcuts of small diameter tube, and again one with wiring. There's even a broom hanging there and a mop.  That lot, if on shelves, would just end up a huge pile of knotted mess.  As it is - each is readily accessible to individually unhook.

Hope these ideas / solutions help trigger your own.

Pete.

[Colin Lindsay]

1 hour ago, Bfg said:

2.  The top, just loosely siting on the 'rag bin' is the top off a discarded washing machine. Having a 'table top' just inside the garage door has proved handy.  

I thought that was just my idea!! I use two, both tops off old washing machines, for laying out parts of carbs etc in order of disassembly; you can write on them with a non-permanent marker and then wipe clean for next time. Great minds think alike!

[Bfg]

^ 

One great mind perhaps, I'm just cheap !

[JohnD]

Back to tools, rather than domestic arrangements?

Fitting the timing cover can be fiddley, getting the chain tension spring in place.  There are several ways:

1/ Fit the crank spacer that bears onto the oil seal in the cover AFTER the cover is on.    The extra room for manoever can allow you to catch the spring on the chain as you offer the cover  up to the front plate, and so position it.     Fit the spacer afterwards, with the bevelled edge to the rear.

2/ Fit the spacer FIRST, but with the bevelled edge forwards.   Compress the spring with a cable tie, or steel strip (eg exhaust tie) and withdraw that afterwards.

3/  Fit the spacer FIRST, etc etc.    Use the tool below to compress the spring.   Make it out of stiff wire - wire coathangers are excellent!   The dimension 'A' depends on whether you have a singlex or duplex chain.   Pull the spring flat against the timing cover, push the tool in and turn through 90 degrees to slide it out before pushing the cover home.

JOhn

[JohnD]

And because this pic was next to the above in my files.

Check the calibration of your torque wrench before using it, or every year.

Clamp the square drive bar in a vice, with the handle horizontal.      Hang something heavy from the handle, and set the wrench to an appropriate figure.   Ideally, the hanger should be relatively narrow, the strap I used might be said to distribute the load too widely, but as long as you can know the centre of gravity of the load, then it will act on the handle immediately above that.

The torque the load is applying is the weight of the heavy item, times its distance from the centre of the drive bar.   Move the load outwards in small increments, until the wrench clicks.   Measure where it is, and calculate the torque.   Compare with the setting.   +/- 5% is OK, 2% best.    

As shown, I use a saloon flywheel, 12.5kgs, 27.5lbs, so two feet from the drive bar is 55lbs-ft.    If you want to check a higher torque, then a length of tube over the handle will extend it,  say to six feet and 165lbs-ft with that same flywheel.

Worth doing. Apart from knowing your nuts and bolst are correctly torqued,  I once ruined a block by cracking it, because my torque wrench was underreading, by 60%!

John

 

[68vitesse]

Wouldn't the weight of the handle and any extension have to be included in the calculation or is that being to pedantic.

Regards

Paul