Oh Yea; and if you can't afford concrete for your shop floor 1/2 crushed stone works great. Levels off easily and packs firm. But if you drop anything small better hope it's ferrous metal so you can find it with the long handled magnet. Bill.
About two years ago I found a brand new, still in the box, Auto Meter tach on a bottom shelf in the garage behind some plastic water bottles. I have absolutely no memory of ever buying that tach and don't know what I would have bought it for. Sometimes things like that are a little scary but at least I've got a nice, new tach.
You're just pulling our leg right? It's a slam at interior decorators because so many of them are gay. Another variation on that theme is a joke about either a mugger or a ****** that's gay... he holds the girl down and does her hair - Someone mentioned having a socket that's MIA. I have a 9/16ths deep-well impact missing from my toolbox that I think I know where it is. I was pulling the intake of a '76 Trans Am to check the valley for the CI casting and it fell down the back of the block, between it and the firewall, bounced off the right side of the trans and vanished. Apparently into thin air, because I spent an hour with a flashlight pulling the gr*** and weeds out from under there and feeling around for it. I know it's there, somewhere, but apparently I need to have my buddy lift the car up off the ground with his rollback so I can actually get under and look. Unless a chipmunk took it to use over the winter to loosen his nuts - Ironically a few weeks ago I was looking for something else in my toolbox - now bear in mind this is just a small one, the plastic one they were selling cheap at Wal-mart a while back - and here in the bottom are a few sockets. Including a Craftsman deep-well 9/16ths. I bought the impact set because I couldn't find this one in the first place. I didn't know whether to laugh, or yell some more obscenities.
Agree, about half the time I spend working on projects is looking for the f'n tool I just had, whatever it might be. Haven't moved 5ft and somehow still can't find what I'm looking for. Oh ****, there it is, yep, right where I left it. How did it get there?
Don't feel bad I do that all the time. I don't even want to think about how much time I spend looking for stuff in my shop.
The best instance of this is when the guy I bought my first house from insisted that someone went into his garage and stole ONE Weiand Y block valve cover. "Fred, if anyone was with it enough to know what they fit, why the hell would they steal one?". "I dunno, but they did". He found it months later, at the bottom of a pile of **** in the bed of his Ranchero.
Years ago I had a good hot rod friend p*** away from cancer, seems like since then he keeps hiding stuff he knows I will need, only to leave it in place in plain sight after watching me look for it for a while. I'm sure I can hear him laughing about it everytime.
I have a garage troll that moves thing from the car shop to my other shop 1/4 mile down the road. Thought the funniest one happened two weeks ago. My daughter's boyfriend uses my shop and is constantly using my can of Kryoil when cheaper product will do. Well I put the can of Kryoil where he could not find it and now I can not find it, in either building.
This organization technique saved my *** - my "it will run in a year" is on year 17 and the 10 rolls of 35mm prints too - Three moves and most of the **** is where it should be - except my gut seems to be farther souty - oh and my hair is gray now and the bad knees
the problem is then you lose an entire bag of parts instead of just one, DON"T make the garage gremlins mad!!
Like others, I'm glad I'm not the only one that aint sane.... Spent better part of a day looking for my sungl***ess going in and out of the house, running errands etc...I usually always put them on top of my head when not in use....I checked there couple times, top of the microwave, in the cars etc... Finally mentioned it to my wife, instantly she responds with...you check the back of your neck? I put em backwards on the back of my neck... The other problem I have is ratchets....I always loose em...I have 6 or 7 of em and can usually only find 2 at any given time. It really makes me happy when I'm looking for the one with a specific socket on it that "I just set down over there" and it aint there...an hour later after I retrieved the second one and put a new socket on it I sit down and realize it's in my back pocket. OR the ever ellusive air chuck....for the longest time I only had one...whenever I needed it I couldnt find it and had to go to the gas station to get air...when I dont need it...there it is. I've scince solved that problem by going to the H.F. and buying 6 of em and zip tying those little red wrist bungie cords and a "remove before flight" flag on them. and hanging them all over the garage. Still I can only ever find 2 or so of them. BUT at least I can find one!
The other day I took I took my can of WD40 outside, along with some tools. I now cannot find the can of WD40. It is so irritating. I've looked everywhere around the work area, the route I took, my workshop. It's nowhere around. It's not uncommon for me to misplace a wrench or screwdriver when I'm working on my car, but I anyways find it after about a minute and a few curse words...
I bought a pair of Mint manifolds for my 65 Buick. When I needed to install them, they were nowhere to be found. I looked for over a year off and on, never did find them, so I bought another pair, not as nice, both needed repair, and they cost more. One day I was installing a 350 turbo trans. I needed a vacuum modulator, I knew I had one, spent a couple hours looking, said screw it and went to the parts store, and bought one. Brought it home, and set it on the bench, right next to the one I couldn't find. So I decided to keep the spare, and put it in the small parts cabinet, right next to another new one that wasn't there an hour ago.
I know where my garage stuff goes. My wife throws it away. If you live anywhere near me she is probably throwing your stuff away too, she loves doing it. It doesnt matter that you paid 50 and its worth 100, she moves it first to a holding area and if I dont ask about it in a certain period of time, in the trash it goes. Computer recovery discs, old notebooks, br*** fittings, I lost some cast air cleaners for webers last year because the box they were in was beat up. I love my wife, but she is an inverse pack rat.
I was building a shock mount crossmember tis weekend and I lost my sharpie about a million times. I was about to freak out!!
Ohhhh I forgot about the sharpie syndrome I have.... Sharpies piss me off....you know you need em, but when you look for em dem little ******s blend right in with working steel..... SO I hit the office supply store bout once a year and buy a box of 25.....sprinkle em all over the garage....toolbox, any flat surface, hell I even throw one or two on the floor...that way....I can always find one. The funny part is.....they still dissappear. I've had buddies come over and ask me "Hey Light....you gotta magic marker fetish or somethin?"
Like a lot of you guys I am glad to hear I am not alone. Couldn't find my electrical tape anywhere so I ended up borrowing the spare roll that was in my tool bag in the trunk of my Model A. Months later I was working under the dash and pulled back the corner of the carpet....Oh there's that roll of tape I lost.
The more difficult it is to find the part again, the higher possibility it will be lost. I did this on the off topic import, pulled the crank pulley and sprockets, and the wooddruff key vanishes, this wasn't something I can just go to a hardware store and buy, it's a 25 year old oddball metric key, I searched that garage from one end to the other, swept the floor with a magnet, crawled under the car with a flashlight, threw ****, created new cuss words etc. I go back an hour later and the key it sitting smack in the middle of the floor right in front of the pulley. I KNOW it wasn't there, I have no doubt it wasn't there. The garage gremlins are a very sadistic little bunch of SOBs
I don't lose parts in the garage, they are lost in the ba*****t. Tools are lost in the garage, at least until I buy a replacement.
I've got to add another post to this thread. Back in the 1980's a lot parts were still available from GM for my '69 Camaro (I've owned it since I was 18 years old - 39 years ago). I'd budgeted a set amount of money that I'd spend each month on new parts for the Camaro (just in case I ever needed them). I bought quarter panels, door skins, fenders, bumpers, weather stripping, emblems, etc. I would figure out how much money I had spent and if there was any left over, I'd add a few small items to the order list. I remember adding a pair of sill plates to the order, when it occurred to me that I'd forgotten all about these items. Well, it seems that I "remembered sill plates" more than once. When I was moving my stash of NOS 1969 stuff, I discovered that I had three sets of sill plates. Oh well, at least it has turned out to be a good investment. About a month ago, I discovered a set of 1934 Ford 5 window coupe garnish moldings that I would have sworn was sold years ago. They're gone now. Part of the set was sold to a fellow in FL and the remainder of the set is going to WY. It was a nice Christmas find for three of us.
OK! I've got to add another one to this post (if I don't he will). I needed my gear puller... it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Then, I remembered that I'd loaned it to Josh (my son-in-law). He said that he didn't have it and had never borrowed it, at all. I protested that I remember placing in the floor of his truck for him to take home and use. He still insisted that he'd never had it. We teased each other about that gear puller for more than a year (I went out and bought another one). After more than a year from when I first noticed that my gear puller was missing, I finally finished up a small project that was ****tered over a pretty good sized area of the garage. While cleaning up and straightening up, I moved a box that was sitting on top of the missing gear puller! I should have sneaked it into Josh's ba*****t and made sure to be there "to find it", but I was so surprised to find it that I just called and "fessed up". I hate remembering something that had never happened. This scares the hell out of me. A mind is a terrible thing to lose! I don't trust my memory at all, anymore. Oh well, I no longer hear the same jokes and I meet all kinds of new people.
I lost my 3/8 ratchet 3 or 4 weeks ago and a few sockets, I have know idea where they are, did I loan them to any of you?? please bring them back.
Lost a bolt to a disc brake caliper, found it later that day hanging on the trouble lite magnet near the ceiling.
The Jalopy Journal
