Can you name the best tool for working on an old Chevy truck?

Factual Questions
1

Mechainiac explains:
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Tools of the Trade
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Hammer: Originally employed as a weapon of war, today the hammer is used as a kind of divining rod to locate tender body parts not far from the object you are trying to hit.

Mechanics Knife: Used to open cardboard cartons. It works particularly well on boxes containing convertible tops or tonneau covers.

Pliers: Used to round off bolt heads.

Hacksaw: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

Vise Grips: Used to remove rounded off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

Oxyacetylene Torch: Used to remove rounded of bolts and free any stuck part.

Drill Press: A tall upright machine useful to suddenly snatch flat metal stock out of your hand so that it smack you in the chest and throws your work across the room.

Wire Wheel: Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints, warts and calluses.

Hydraulic Floor Jack: Used for lowering drop spindle trucks to the ground, trapping the jack handle firmly under the front air dam.

Eight Foot Long 2X4: Used to pry truck upward off a hydraulic jack.

Tweezers: A tool used for removing small wood splinters.

Phone: A tool used for calling around to find another hydraulic floor jack.

E.Z. Out Bolt and Stud Extractor: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes and is ten times harder than any drill bit.

Timing Light: A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease build-up on crankshaft pulleys.

Two-Ton Hydraulic Engine Hoist: A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps and hydraulic clutch lines you may have forgotten to disconnect.

Craftsman 1/2" x 16" Screwdriver: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has accurately machined screwdriver tip on one end.

Battery Electrolyte Tester: A handy tool for transferring Sulphuric Acid from a battery to the inside of your toolbox after determining that you battery is dead as a doornail, just as you thought.

Aviation Metal Snips: See hacksaw.

Trouble Light: Sometimes called a drop light. Its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

Phillips Screwdriver: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt. It can also be used, as the name implies to round off Phillips screw heads.

Air Compressor: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty suspension bolts last tightened 40 years ago by someone in Detroit and rounds them off.
http://www.stovebolt.com/bboard/cgi-bin//ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=9&t=000100#000001

2

Thanks, GOM, that was very funny! :smiley: And there was a lot of truth in there. :wink:

3

You’re welcome…

And if you have an old truck, or even an old car, or just want to own an old truck (or car) in the future, please feel free to join us. These guys really know their stuff!

:slight_smile:

4

It depends on whether you mean just old-----or REALLY OLD.

If it’s a REALY old machine the handiest tool under the hood was a 6"x!/2x9/16 box,open end,or socket wrench with ratchet.

The size fit darn near everything under the hood ,or in the trunk or on the doors.

Also a lot of things inside the oil pan.

It didn’t hurt to have a rocker arm adjusting tooll and feeler guages either.

5

Hehe, I love that one. I hadn’t seen the Americanized version of the U.K. list.

6

Duck tape and baling wire, grasshoppers. That is all you need.

7

I’m not exactly sure where that line should be drawn…

The truck my son just bought is 40 years young. That doesn’t sound REALLY OLD to me! :wink: Until you hafta try to buy parts for it.

However, on the stovebolters site, our truck is probably one of the newer ones! Guys over there have trucks from the 50s, and even from the 40s. Pretty cool stuff.

8

The best tool of all, PB Blast.

9

Here’s mine:

9/16" wrench: a mysterious tool with the ability to disappear within fifteen minutes of when you get the wrench set home.

14mm wrench: close enough.

Garage: a room with the ability to spontaneously generate piles of junk.

Shop bench: a tool used to keep piles of junk off the floor.

Tool board: a wall hanging with outlines of the tools that you own, used to prove that you do indeed own those tools and they are somewhere around here.

Van: a mobile storage device, filled when nothing else will fit in the garage.

Landfill: a mysterious place that no one has been to but everyone wants to go as soon as they get caught up with the projects that they are working on.