I was on a test drive with a customer Friday morning when we passed a house with a sign out front that read, "Tool estate sale Friday and Saturday 9-5". As we drove by the house I looked into the open garage and saw tables full of tools sitting there. We got back to the shop and I couldn't diagnose the customer's car fast enough so that a co-wroker and I could get down there and have a look. It was 9:15. We were not disappointed. There was a couple sitting there. They were probably in their 50's. The man said his dad used to own a couple of garages around the cities. I would guess that that must have been quite a few years ago. There wasn't a lot of really useful stuff. There were some hammers, screwdrivers, basic hand tool type stuff and then some other interesting old stuff. Really, outside of the stuff Pat and I scored there wasn't anything you wouldn't find at any swap meet. Here's what I got. Starting in the upper left and going clockwise. The old flashlight was $1- and it works! I thought it would look cool in some kind of 'emergency kit' in the car. Then there is the AutoRanger engine analyzer. The guy had two other ones that were newer and probably had a better chance of actually working. This was clearly the oldest looking one and I thought it was too cool to pass up for $5. I haven't tried it yet. I'm guessing it's very old. There is a service sticker on the back that lists two electrical shops that serviced the unit in the past. Both of their phone numbers are short and have some letters in them. Cool. Down in the lower right corner is an old Blue Point (Snap-On) tire pressure gauge. I got that for $2.50. Running the length of the bottom of the large wooden box was an old, long, skinny Blue Point wrench. When I saw the odd shape of this I knew it must have been made for a very specific purpose. I did a little research and found it was an old 'tappet wrench' made between the 40's and 60's. $2 for that. I also found this neat old Snap-On vacuum gauge. For $5 I thought it was too cool to pass up. Probably the thing I thought was coolest was the Lev-l Light headlight service center. This is a nice old wooden box, well built with even dove-tail joints! When I expressed interest in it the woman started to show me that it opened up and the actual equipment was still in there. WHOA! :-bd I was thinking, "You can stop trying to sell this- I'll take it!". SO I took it. It was $10. I thought it was worth it just for the very cool old case. One thing not in the above photos I also picked up was nice brand new Mity-vac vacuum pupm kit still in the box for $3. I also got this Snap On allen wrench set for $2.50. I thought that was a pretty good deal. I'd bet new it would have been easily over $50. With a little bargaining I got everything for $28. Not too bad for some cool (but pretty much probably useless) old stuff.
some cool old stuff there. im constantly checking the newspaper on the weekends for the garage sales etc. to see if i can pick up some cool old stuff
I'll open it up and take a picture. It's some weird looking stuff. It appears the only thing missing from it are the directions on how to actually use it.
I've sold newer headlight aimer kits ('60s or '70s Delco in plastic cases) for $30-$40, so you did good there. Ignition tester on the other hand is probably barely worth what you paid for it, but the good news is $5 isn't much to be out. Transistorized means it's probably 1960s era.
No.... It uses an anti-pincushion magnet to realign all the plusses and minuses in your head lights. Don't you know nuthin'???
that autoranger is made by simpson and they are still around making anolog V.O.M. meters and i bet they could tell you the vintage of it.
Ahoy! the electronic "smoke theory", magic smoke makes stuff work good and only fails when "smoke let out" (grin), that and "the bigger the glob, the better the job" soldering theory, I remember all from early military electronics school!
The Jalopy Journal
