Since this is tech week lets see if we can get at least 101 quick tech tips. Rod and Custom used to do this lets see if we can. We should be able to do more than 101. Don't worry if they are old tricks, new tricks or ones that have been done a million times. I'm sure there is sombody that will say they could use the idea. I went through the shop and snapped of a couple of quick ones. I'll get a couple more when I have more time. I'll start off with an easy one. I took an old speaker and busted the magnet off of it. Then I stuck the magnet to the side of my drillpress. Now I can stick the key and several drillbits right to the side of the drill. Helps to keep from loosing the key. Clark
It's a battery box! Just bolt a cheap old metal cooler into the bed or in your trunk and put a big enough hole in the bottom for battery cables. I got this one at a yardsale for fifty cents. You could use one with a rusty bottom, but I wouldn't use your wife's good Coke cooler. No....it won't keep your PBR cold anymore! Clark
I used to get pissed off every time I made spark plug wires. The cheap tool they give you to crimp the ends was hard to use by yourself. You had to hold the wire and the one half of the too while you hit it with a hammer. After smacking my hand a couple of times I found a better way. I welded the tool to an old pair of plyers. Now it's a lot easier.
heres one for those of us who are always removin tires and wheels for some reason: how many times have you tried every end of your 4-way wrench trying to find the right size to fit the lugnuts? i paint eash bar of my wrench a different color, coded to cars. i use silver for the end that fits all the chrome mag wheel nuts, one bar red, to match the lugnuts on the red car, etc. that way at a glance you grab the correct end of the wrench. same thing could work for your sockets and wrenches, they can be color coded by size, wo when you're hunting for the 9/16 it will be easy to spot cause it's PINK!
I still put half of the crimping tool in the vise, but it's a lot easier to hold everything now. I think there is a fancy tool that does this now but I had these and they work good enough for me. Clark
Ok, here's one I figured out in High school. Done it on everything since! Since we had the discussion about ****** dust covers the other day it reminded me... If you are running a GM auto trans (I don't know if it would work on others) without the dust cover in place, cut the ears that it bolts to off of the bellhousing. It will usually make the difference between having to lift the motor to get full length headers in, or just droppin 'em in!
Cool!! Some of you guys are already speaking up. I didn't even think to use the one about the 4way lug wrench. I used electric tape on mine. One band is 3/4 and two bands is 13/16. Here's one that has been brought up here many times and I got it from here. 65 Mustang radiators work great in Hot Rods. I have put one in several cars and so far non have had overheating problems. Here is one in a 29 Ford grill shell. Clark
Good one Clark. But you are a genius anyway so I expect stuff like that from you My tech tip: When **** welding a patch in and you notice things start to warp on you keep in mind it is the weld area shrinking, and pulling the surrounding metal out of shape. So whatever you do only correct this buy stress reliving the weld. You do this by hammer-on dolly the weld. This will streach the weld area back out and relive the stress to the surrounding metal. You will see the warped area magicly go away if you do this right. The bigest mistake people make is to try and work the area that gets out of shape. The problem is there is nothing really wrong with that area and you only cause a problem by trying to work that area without dealing with the situation that caused the metal to move. This may seem slightly advanced for some but it is the most common proplem I see when guys start welding tops, patches, or whatever. If you want try a test piece. get a couple of pieces of 20 guage sheet meatal and **** weld them togeather. Preferrabley with a tig or gas(the Henrob is good here). Make the piece about 8 or 10 inches long. Go ahead and weld the two pieces togeather and dont worry about any warpage. when you are done you will notice it will warp quit alot actually. Now take an all purpos dolly and hammer directly on the weld working your way across. Don't beat the hell out of it just enough to flatten the weld some and you will notice the wavy part of the sheet metal will start to flatten out on it own. Just be carfull not to over hammer it because then it will start to streach too much and then you have the opposit problem. Then you will need to shrink it back down. but thats another tech post
This is my last one for now. I've gotta get back in the shop and get some stuff done. I would be lost in my shop without this cheesey *** table. It's made of 1" angle iron and get's used for everything. We weld and cut on it. With a couple of clamps and a peice of angle iron it is turned into a sheetmetal brake. I paint parts on it and with a little foam pipe insulation (there's a peice on the one side in the pic) it's great for wet sanding fenders and such. Clark
Swap meet/Pick-up tech - You got to the swap meet early to get the best deals, first thing you see a pair of 40 Ford front fenders NO RUST!! $50 pr.! You don't plan on dragging them around all day, so you walk back out to your truck in the parking lot and toss them in the bed. Someone else looking for parts is getting a much better deal than you did by waiting until you are out of sight and ******ing them. Always bring a lock and a long length of chain or wire rope with eyes with you, if you just bought a pair of rust-free 40 Ford fenders, you don't want them riding home in the back of someone elses truck, then seeing them on ebay a few days later. Lock your stuff to the loops inside the bed or through another hole on the truck.
Take wo pieces of Angle iron. Weld them together in an X shape. And you have a good help when drilling holes into tubing. You will hit center all of the time. Here is me drilling without using only one hand, and its not on the tube ;-)
MOtorcycle, and im sure EVERYONE knows about it... but still tech...when pressing in neck cups and races, its virtually impossible to do without cursing and a very big hammer.....get some all thread (petty thick) about 10 washers, 2 nuts and a wrench or two.....viola. I use this same technique only backwards and with sockets at each end for tightening up a belt. and alighing primary....below is a pick of that too, but not my picture. i ripped it off bikernet. http://www.network54.com/Realm/tmp/1091587406.JPG
I'm still lurnin' so I don't have much to add other than one I learned from...Bob Villa! On your (preferably new) sockets take some white/bright color paint and wipe/brush it across the etched sizing on the socket. Then carefully wipe off the excess leaving a more visible and legible socket size. Note: if the things are etched very shallow no matter how careful you are the paint will wipe off or come off with very little use.
My tip: No mess, easy water pump gasket seal. I learned this one from some old flathead guys. On the 59A and earlier flathead, the water pumps are lubricated with crankcase oil via a p***age in the front of the block. If you were to install a water pump using some sort of silicon goop as a sealant, there is a very good chance that the goop will ooze and clog the p***age. As you can imagine, this would result in water pump faliure in about 50 miles. The trick avoid this is to use spray paint as a sealant. Spray a solid coat of paint (what ever color you want) on both sides of the gasket. Let it sit a few minutes until the paint becomes tacky. Then install the gasket and pump as normal. This gives you an excellent seal without any oozy (not Uzi) mess. I've used this method on all of the water pumps (not just flatheads) that I have installed in the past 5 years, plus I used it on the intake manifold for my flathead. It all looks really tidy, you don't get goop all over everything and I have never had a leak.
Always check when you change your oil filter to make sure that the gasket came off with the filter and isn't stuck to the block- especially if your block is painted. If it is then you will end up with two gaskets on there- one will blow off to the side somewhere down the road and you will loose oil pressure instantly. This caused the early demise of a motor I built once. . . when i figured out what had happened I was not happy with myself. Like they say in Texas. . . "Fool me once- shame on you. Fool me twice . . uh . . uh . . we won't get fooled again."
Get a cheap engraver and engrave your initials on all of your tools at least twice. If you work in a shop with other people it'll stop arguements. If your tools get stolen it'll help identify the thief. All in all a good idea...
Better yet, engrave your driver's license number, that way if they do get stolen you have a hope in hell of maybe recovering them, the police will try and trace a driver's license number back to owner.
must be a cl***ic but I only started doing it after seeing it in a cl***ic-bike mag: when dissasembling parts with little parts (balls, springs..) like a carb, first d**** a cloth over your bench, all wrinkly, don't smooth it out, all parts that fall or jump out will be lots easier to find.
had to sand some concave curves, like the fender lip, on my 65 chevy. used the same sticky strip paper i had for the longboard and stuck it to a piece of small PVC tubing, instant longboard for curves. there ya go fellas, my poor attempt at tech
I love the magnet on the drill press. These guys never put their bits back, or the chuck key. Here's my 2 bits- Since we are doing the tech thing, here we go. Shop rags: Back when I was a kid, I remember my dad using my old diapers as rags. They absorb, theyre soft, and there were bunches of them between my cousins and I. Great for soaking up spilled oil, or washing and waxing. Now days, between old shirts I like to use an old sweat sock. Take a razor and slit it up the middle so its not a tube any more. These are good. Or when staying at a hotel, grab a hand towel each time. These are great, they are usually white, and in good shape. Lately Ive come across a new discovery. While in the bathroom, I looked under the sink and found some items in a box that described them as extra absorbent. I grabbed the box and went outside. Come to find these are the best. They come in all sizes, some have wings, but even better than that, they have an adhesive back. Peel the strip and stick it to the palm of your hand. Blam! No more dropping your rag. Then one day I found another device my wife had been hiding from me. This one came in a tube, kinda like a push-up ice cream. These worked great in tight spots like the valleys on your intake manifold, or cleaning the inside threads on something. Not only that, but it came with a string and gets larger as it gets wet. One day getting out of the shower and unable to find a dry towel, I opted for my new discovery. I couldnt find one with the sticky back, so I popped one out of the tube, grabbed it by the string and started swinging away. I felt like I was beating the hell out of myself with miniature/ half set of nunchucks. Sorry I dont have pictures. Good luck
Magnet on the drill press refined. Get one of those key-on-a-leash retractable key rings and clip it to the drill press. Then put the chuck key on it. That magnet might just vibrate enough to walk off the press and drop your chuck key. The clip won't.
I keep an old chunk of paneling or thin plywood in the garage. Great to lay on when you have to crawl under a car that just dumped a quart of oil, snow melt or ****** fluid on the floor. Works in the driveway too. Throw it same side down all the time and it'll last you quite a while. Put a plug-in by your garage door and hang an extension cord on a hook next to it. I like to do most things in the driveway rather than in the garage when the weather allows. More light and room. I've found if you let your buddy put his car in your garage to swap an alternator, it'll take him weeks while he uses your space and tools to fix everything on the car. In the driveway, he'll have that alternator swapped out and be gone before dark!
Along the same vein as Smokin Joe's post, allow me to inttroduce the "Ghetto Creeper." Same thing, only its just a big piece of cardboard. Such an apparatus was great at my old apartment building, where the "asphalt" parking lot was really just loose, sharp gravel. And, you just throw it into the dumpster when its saturated with grease and oil...
[ QUOTE ] My vote for tech week winner: Slik Mofo's "feminine by-product" tech!!! [/ QUOTE ] Thank you, thank you very much. On behalf of those that shared info, Im just returning the favor.
or even better, I found using a piece of linoleum. No splinters, cleans off easy, nice and slippery, and doesn't soak thru.
TIP 1: Take of of those pen/pencil finger cushion things and put it on your pen. Do not use a pencil. This will help avoid blisters while writing checks. TIP 2: Place your gold chain on the outside of your collar or cuff to avoid skin abrasions.
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