Technical Little tips and tricks for garage hobbyists.

Don't know if it has been said before, but DON'T throw any parts out because they're damaged.

 

Oh good lord - you'd die for my place then... ;( .
Marcus...

 

This goes especially for overdrive solenoids and Studebaker V8 starters!

 

Sounds as if you were looking in my tractor tool box , until .45 ACP . Mine is .357 mag and a few .12 ga 000 buck shot . I always keep something handy when in the woods gathering fire wood . Snakes are not my friend .

 

Snakes! Why did it have to snakes?

 

Chuckle... But I don't like 'em either.
Marcus...

 

Here is another tip on how to identify those hard to describe things you put in the bolt drawers.....

Not pretty..........but efficient and helps to remind you that you still have these odd things.

 

A couple of paper towel holders in the shop. First is galvanized pipe fittings. As this one is only about 6" from an outside door the wind/breeze kept enrolling the towels. The cut down Pepsi bottle stopped that.



Next is one I fabbed up on the spur of the moment when I decided paper towels in that end of the shop would be handy.



Last is a toilet paper holder. My shop has a wood stove, but as it's pretty much uninsulated the stove is only a place to go warm up occasionally. Even inside the shop my nose runs a lot when it's really cold outside. Having the toilet paper close by is nice to have.

 

My Cresent wrenches get used more for bending flanges on thin metals more so than being used on bolts and nuts.

I will use 2 crescents and walk the edge slowly working up a lip. I will actually tighten them tight against the metal and work the edge slowly up and down its length.

I find the tighter I can get it, the tighter the lip corner. I will even use the Cresent to walk the edges and lips along with a hammer.

Of course you have to be careful on metal thickness vs the Cresent you use, don't want to try using a metric Cresent on imperial thickness metal and vice versa !!

...

 

Do you use a left handed Cresent wrench for working left to right and a right handed Cresent wrench going right to left?
Dan

 

A friend had a Crescent wrench hanging on a nail on his workbench leg. Must of been near 3 feet long. I asked where the hell do you use that? He said I don't cause its metric. I just keep it hanging there because the bench is warped and it keeps that corner down.

 

I got tired of trying to make nice holes/rounds with the hand held plasma.
Now it got easier,why didn`t I do this 20 years ago??Stupid.



Capacity 55-560mm 2,165-22 inch

 

Nice job Hansen, now you need a little pan of water directly under the arc and a few inches down to catch the slag and smoke. I hate plasma cutting indoors because of the nasty smoke. It's amazing what a water bath will do. Since your cutter head is stationary y0u won't need a big pan, a bread pan would be enough.

 

I have a tin bucket under,,no water tho.

 

Water is the answer. It will stop the smoke. Just a drain pan on top of the trash can would do it I bet.

 

My go anywhere vice. 110 lb. school bus drum and a 75 lb., 6" vice. Of course once I built the stand I had to clean and paint the vice. Found Bondo covering the genuine Chinesium under the old paint. Tip it and roll it to where you need it. Stays put once you place it. On dirt or gravel you need a couple of pieces OSB or plywood to keep it from digging in.

 

do you know the old trick of putting a stub shaft steering wheel in the vise and 'drive it' around?

 

I've never heard of that. Do you have a pic you can post? My vises are all permanently mounted on benches so will never need to do this, but my curiosity meter is pegged.

b-t-w; if you make a stand (grinder, vise, etc.) using a flywheel for the base do yourself a favor and remove the starter ring first. You'll keep from making hundreds of divots in your concrete floor when you move it around. I've never made such a stand but helped a friend (RIP Ed) remove the starter ring from his stand after he damaged his floor.

 

The largest vise I own I bought at Sam's Club many years ago. It was the first vise I ever bought and couldn't afford anything better. I still use it occasionally though. Like yours mine had Bondo smoothing out the rough casting that I couldn't see in the store. It only became apparent after some hard use. Oh, well, it still does the job even if it ain't purty. Yes; it's ugly. Yes; it's made of Chinesium. But it's hell for stout and works well enough for me. I'd love to have a Wilton bullet vise but I doubt I'll ever be able to afford one. In their various shops (electric, plumbing, etc.) the local VA hospital has all Wilton bullet vises. They have been there since the hospital opened in 1972 and they all function as if they were brand new and look just about that good.

 

Never heard of that. Not sure I would trust that much weight to the power of a vice clamping a steering shaft. I just run the vice all the way in and grab the vice. That way I have direct control when tipping and rolling it.

 

That was meant as a joke guys.

 

Man I love this place
Dan

 

Not trick, but I made my own shake-break bit for my air impact. Drilled out 3/8 drive side of a 3/8-1/2 adapter, and fitted impact shank to it. Welded a 1/2" nut to it, to enable turning the screw when required. Uses the bit adapter from my hammer style impact driver.

 

Rough Sorting Drill Bits..........

I have so many drill bits that finding the size I needed became a problem. I came across a cabinet on Facebook that was cheap ($50 or so) several years ago. I organized it to make it easier. A small cable was crimped in place to retain a 1" micrometer so it would always be there when needed. I have added a lot more drill bits over the years and bought a drill sharpener to keep them in shape. This works really well and I keep it in my garage where the milling machine and lathe are kept. Thats where its usually more important to have exact sizes for things. Larger drill bits and reamers are kept in the lower drawers.



It looks pretty empty here, but I buy industrial packs of bits and have added a lot to it. But this is not what I want to show everyone. My Drill Press is located in the pole barn and I do a lot of drilling that doesn't have to be as precise. I have another cabinet out there that has a tray on top of it. I decided that if I could just keep a bunch of bits handy out there, it would save a lot of trips to the garage. I decided that just keeping them "ROUGH SORTED" would make it easier to get sizes I needed. Basically I can get pretty close when putting drill bits back in the tray, but there are always the ones that are close to the .100/.200/.300/etc sizes. I keep a 1" mic cabled to this cabinet for verifying size when I'm going to drill something, but it was too much trouble when just putting them back in a tray.

So.............finally to the point............my great tip!

I simply drilled holes in the top of the cabinet that were .100/.200/.300....... Now when putting those drills back, I just see if they fit in a certain size hole and can toss them in the correct tray quickly. Simple but effective, and it makes it where I usually only have to check a few bits to find one the size I need.



Rocket Science.......HUH!

 

Getting water pump and radiator tube sizes to work together.............

While working on an engine installation, I had an issue with the radiator hose tubes being different than the tubes on the water pump. There are other ways to solve the problem, but its always easier to find a hose if it can be the same size at both ends.
This only works on the water pump end if you have a pump that has a pressed in tube rather than a cast part of the pump. The reason I'm posting this here though is because it can also be done to the radiator tubes if they are too small.

I used an exhaust expander and simply expanded the tube in the water pump so that its the same size as the radiator tube on the engine swap I'm doing. If someone buys a radiator that has too small a tube, they can expand it. I'm saying that if you cannot get a radiator with the correct size, then consider going smaller and expanding instead of going too large and having to solve that problem.

Or if as in my case, the radiator was larger but my water pump had a pressed in tube, expand the water pump tube. I have a hydraulic expander, so it was ultra easy to do.
A muffler shop could do it in just a few minutes if they have a small enough mandrel. They also have the expanders with mechanical (wrench) expansion. Just be sure you get one small enough to go inside the tube you need to expand. There are sets available for about $30 that have 3 mandrels. Those are usually where you find the small size one.

Anyway, now I can use a single diameter hose for my project. Now I gotta modify the thermostat housing for the other radiator tube. Can't expand that casting.

 

The Blue Tennis Ball.................

Years ago my mother got her drivers license rather late in life and was not a very good driver. I put a tennis ball in her garage that dangled from a rafter so that when she pulled into the garage she could keep going till her windshield bumped against it.


Fast forward 40 years or so..........

I have a milling machine in our attached garage and its near the rear wall right behind where my wife (and I) park her SUV. It's still in perfect shape and we want to keep it that way. The milling machine cuts down on the available space for parking the SUV. To compound the problem, we always back into parking spaces and that includes the garage.
A tennis ball can't be used because the SUV has roof racks which could snare the ball ....so that didn't appear to be feasible.......plus I just didn't like the idea of doing that.

So with a little thought and a little effort, I purchased a party light ($20) like the ones that shine on mirrored balls they have hanging from the ceiling in bars (so I'm told ). Then I made a bracket to mount it below the open garage door but a couple feet above the SUV's roof. Plugged it into one of the garage door openers lightbulb plugs. Used the remote to turn it on and select a color............BLUE in my selection.

Now when we back the SUV or any other car into the garage on that side, the garage door lift also turns the light on when I push the remote opener. The light shines straight down and as the vehicle backs in, the blue "tennis ball" appears thru the windshield and makes a ball shape on the dash.

Perfect Parking every time. When the door opener light goes off, so does the blue tennis ball light.

So if anyone is a little crowded for space when parking their expensive (or not) Hot Rod or Custom Car, this pretty well eliminates having to get out of the car and see if you got it right.











Perfect Parking every time so far............

 

That is absolutely BRILLIANT!

 

@ekimneirbo Thanks for the tip on expanding the radiator hose fitting to match. I can use that same idea, to expand the fuel tank inlet(from a newer vehicle) to match the steel neck that's on the body. Same diameter fuel inlet hose can connect the two with simplicity.

 

@ekimneirbo that's a great idea. My dad set up a 4x4 for my mom and him to back into the dark hole garage. Just ease back into it. Too heavy to get bumped, blocked the wheels just right.

 

I thought about a bar or angle on the floor, but was afraid I would trip over it when I was distracted by whatever I might be working on when the car wasn't there. I tripped over something last year while watering some new plants (in the dark) before going to bed. Spent the whole summer in misery going to the immediate care and then a chiropractor for a couple months, even bought one of those inversion machines, and an assortment of medications and vibrating and electric stimulation machine. (muscle stimulation guys...) Nothing helped sufficiently but after I tried the inversion machine things began to improve. I don't know if that helped, but nothing seemed to cure me before then. Thought I was going to have to get surgery or give up doing anything. Never had a back problem like that before.

So, I try not to do anything that may cause me to stumble.....ever again!