As much of the world plunges into the sort of deep freeze that may be the work of a clandestine global super villian, the trusty snow and ice scraper seems the perfect mid-winter Ernst Starvo Blofeld edition of Tool of the Week. Growing up in New England meant carrying one or more of these handy tools around for nearly six months out of the year, along with a childhood chock-a-block with scraping and shoveling. The archetypal Clunkbucket was in fact a 1964 Volkswagen Beetle. The heat exchangers had corroded into nothing long before the car fell for 500 bucks into the hands of this freshly licensed driver, who was more or less as old as whatever German ferrous materials the Vermont road salt had not eaten away. The car came already equipped with a scraper. This bonus snow and ice scraper served well to remove frozen crud from the outside of the window in this heatless automobile. The three-inch wide miracle of plastic injection and space age polymer technology was also very handy for scraping ice from the inside of the front windshield. Especially while driving. Heating and defrosting systems have come a long way since the rusted 1964 Bug, virtually eliminating the need for in cabin ice scraping. Snow and ice scrapers have been improved to wider and brush-equipped telescoping handle versions as shown here. Odds are good that any used car glovebox in the Northeast will contain one or more seventies-style Plexiglas models, making the vintage tools not only useful but collectible.
Archive for the ‘Tool of the Week’ Category
Tool of the Week: Snow and Ice Scraper
Tool of the Week: Duct Tape
From the what can’t it fix division of Tool of the Week comes the ongoing miracle of duct tape. This sturdy and versatile tape is indispensable weapon in the Clunkbucket Arsenal of Tools, rivaling even bailing wire in its utility. The water repelling adhesive tape was originally made of cotton duck in green for the military. Duck tape was used to help keep ammo cases waterproof, and was also found effective for holding jeeps together. A post-war heating and ventilation construction boom had tape factories making lots of duck tape to hold metal duct work together. Green became silver. Duck became duct. Duct tape is now available in many colors.
Black duct tape has in fact held together the seven pieces of the original three-piece front air dam of the Starion for many years now. Not the same duct tape. Research has proven that a well placed strip of duct tape lined up with the painted black stripe on the lower part of the air dam is good for about three to six months of stock appearing durability. A roll of black duct tape now rides with the Starion at all times. Be advised. Going up on two wheels to get to the drive-in window before they run out of Shamrock Shakes may markedly decrease the effectiveness of duct tape on low-mounted front air dams.
Tool of the Week: Snap-Ring Pliers
From the how did they get that thing in there division comes the snap-ring pliers edition of Tool of the Week. Snap-rings themselves are also known as circlips, rotor rings, and retaining rings. These flattish rings are usually found holding in a bearing or assembly by way of being stuck into a machined groove. In this case a pair of snap-rings was holding a piston onto a connecting rod by way of a steel pin. Snap rings can also be found holding u-joint bearing cups in place. Look closely before hammering. A snap-ring pliers set or a fancy multipurpose pair of snap-ring pliers won’t get used too often, but you’ll be glad you have them when you run into a snap-ring. Attempting to remove a snap-ring or circlip with tools other than snap-ring pliers may have possibly lent these flat clips another name. The where did that damn spring steel thing go clip. In this case, a snap-ring assortment is a good plan.
Tool of the Week: Engine Stand
From the Mitsubishi forklift engine department comes this special Engine Stand bonus how-to edition of Tool of the Week. The Engine Stand is a purposeful tool that is designed to hold an engine block for dismantling and assembly. While these stands are great to have around, they do not posses an abundance of utility when not holding up an engine. Most engine stands are often seen in their natural habitat of back yards, or sides of houses half covered by a blue tarp. Up until recently, one of the Clunkbucket engine stands was holding up a spare Toyota 4K-C engine in the garage, and the other languishing in the back yard, holding up a blue tarp. The clarion call of free parts from the internets along with a drive to the wine country has since put the spare engine stand back into useful service holding up yet another Mitsubishi G54B turbo engine block. In the processes of this engine transport excursion we not only figured out that the Starlet can carry a spare engine, but that an engine stand can be used as a fulcrum to extract an engine block from the Starlet. We also put to the test the old maxim that free is always better than good. Read on for a step-by-step guide of something that by law we absolutely cannot recommend you attempt.
Step-by-Step Economy Engine Block Transport
Tool of the Week: Universal Joints
Welcome to the we’ll make it fit bonus trick edition of Tool of the Week. If there were an equal amount of space around every nut and bolt, we would all only need one kind of wrench. The reality is getting the twist to the fastener in just half the battle. What goes together like butter at the factory usually puts up a fight in the garage. Why did they put that bolt up there against the firewall? So folks would buy universal joint drives! Shown are impact and hand cranked varieties of universals, or wobblers, that have collected over time in the Clunkbucket Arsenal of Tools. The least expensive universals are the non-impact u-joint type, which have their own issue of wobbling around every direction except the one they should. Years ago we learned a trick to solve that problem with a short length of electrical tape. Follow a simple step-by-step for improved universal control.
Achieve Universal Control with this E-Z Tape Trick
Tool of the Week: Spark Plug Socket
Welcome to the dissimilar materials edition of Tool of the Week. Specialty sockets to remove oddly shaped oxygen sensors or inner ball joints are less common choices than the oft used spark plug socket. The genius of this specialty socket is the rubber donut that grabs onto the ceramic bit of the spark plug. The donut not only makes fishing the spark plug out of the hole an easy task, but also works in reverse to hold the spark plug in the socket when it comes time to thread the plug back in!
The rule is that the spark plug socket included as a bonus with any socket set will inevitably be the wrong size for the car or truck in the driveway. The extensive spark plug socket collection in the Clunkbucket Arsenal of Tools is the end result of having a few different cars. Modifications make things more fun. Anyone who has ever had a V8 equipped with a set of headers will attest to trying nearly every variety of spark plug socket and wobbler to find something that worked. Turbochargers can present similar problems. Spark plugs can also be fished out and threaded into the hole by pushing a length of leftover fuel and vapors line pushed over the insulator.
Tool of the Week: Engine Code Reader
Welcome to the one if by land, two if by sea 50-in-1 electronic playground edition of the Tool of the Week. This time around we’re peering into computerized technology. The 1987 Mitsubishi Starion is a fuel injected car, but by no means modern. The transitional period between carburated and electronically injected engines produced some interesting if not cantankerous systems. The two-injector throttle body injection on the Starion falls into the island of misfit toys category, but the car is equipped with fully transistorized Electronic Control Unit. Any ECU made after 1995 can be accessed with a readily available universal engine code reader to help sort out check engine lights. The only people that had a Mitsubishi code reader back in 1987 were Mitsubishi (and Chrysler) dealerships. These machines were a few steps ahead of ENIAC, and about as expensive. Proving that you can learn and save money on the internets is the forum post that provided the knowledge to solder together this simple engine code reader from a two-dollar 12V LED and thirty-cent alligator clips from the local Radio Shack. Just find the pin outs and count the blinks.
Tool of the Week: Battery Post and Terminal Brush
Welcome to the Tool of the Week crust removal Independence Day edition. The battery post and terminal cleaner brush is really two tools in one. The lower part of gizmo is full of stiff wires that clean up battery posts in short order with a few twists of the handle. An opposite twist of the handle reveals that inside the housing is a bristling porcupine of added utility! Cleaning corrosion from the inside contact surfaces of the terminals is the second use of this multiple purpose tool. The 2-in-1 reversible nature and long years of utility provided by this simple brush make it a required addition for anybody that owns a machine with one or more lead-acid batteries in the mix.
Tool of the Week: Pan and Tray Edition
From the environmental protection and creative reuse division of Clunkbucket comes this installment of Tool of the Week. While not at all glamourous, the drip tray and oil change pan are supremely useful – and can in fact help save the planet. Collecting used oil in a container that won’t puke all over the trunk makes it easy to recycle used engine oil. Picking up another drain pan and dedicating it for engine coolant means pouring the poison green stuff right back into the radiator after replacing a stuck thermostat or cracked heater hose. A drip tray is bonus protection against toxic spills or ruined concrete. Bringing used oil back to an official collection and recycling station means knowing it will get cleaned up and put to good use. The titans of global industry will tranform old crud into new Chuck Taylors, Yuri Gagarin Junior Politburo bureaucrat paperweights, or another quality plastic oil change pan!
Tool of the Week: Compression Tester
From the diagnostic tools division of the garagelet comes the compression tester – or compression test kit. While there is a danger in gathering so many tools with blow-molded cases that you have to start labeling them in Sharpie or ’70s-vintage DYMO labeler to tell them apart, the compression tester can more than pay for itself with the discovery of one or more dead cylinders. Finding out the car you just acquired is in reality a two-and-three quarters cylinder instead of the advertised four-banger makes the compression tester in kit, or cobbled from swap meet parts form, an essential device for those of us who enjoy finding, fixing, and driving the finest past tense automobiles into the future! Being able to figure out what’s going on in that old engine is the first step in fixing it.
More: Compression Test
