home made tools and equipment...

I posted this in the metalshaping thread but I thought I'd share it here too. Doing an off topic lower door patch I was having a tough time holding the dolly inside of the door. I made a dolly out of a piece of bar stock and drilled holes trough it.
Then I drilled 2 holes in the door, one at each end of the weld in the jam part of the door. Then I used a wire and 2 eye screws to hold the dolly in line with the weld for planishing.



It helped a lot!!

 

Keeps the sparks and Debris off the walls

 

Made this torqueflite transmission fixture out of some scrap metal I had . Been fighting these for 45 years , glad I finally made one , it makes rebuilding one so much easier !

 

Now you are talking. Great look and practical too.

 

Finally!! It's been 3 yrs since I built my homemade heavy duty tube bender. Even made my own dies. Built it to be universal so that I could use any companies dies on it.

Wel tonight I finally got to the point I'm ready to use it and it worked great! The first tube was kind of a pain figuring out how I wanted to set it up, the second one took longer to set up than to bend it.

Really happy with the way it came out! Between old stuff I had laying around and using the ram out of my engine hoist I'm into it for under 150 bucks including the metal for the 2 dies I built with it.

Here's a few pics.

 

Nice bends.

 

Thank you!

It's 1-1/4x .120 wall tube. Finished the bends in those today, downside is, I use the jack from my hoist so now I need to pull the engine and trans out so I can finish install the tubes, then swap the jack again so I can install the engine trans again to build the trans crossmember which means swapping jack again!

Maybe it's time for a trip to harbor freight to see what Jack's they have.....

 

BACKYARD PAINTING;
No booth*same for many years on my own cars,just not on a windy or bad day,not even near frash cut grass, spry for bugs if needed,wet down grass with water,/best if your fence or bushis keep nosey's away. Always have old bad body part of some type, for test spray,can be same from last time. Lost count of how many,as did a few for buddys too.

I like black,an have used black a lot,none high $,but pre prep is KING* Make it smooth before it's shiny black...or whhatever shiny color.
I don't let my rod set out side much,if not driving. So garaged when not being used.
Do the work,I used Rust-Oleum Gloss Black,starting in the late 1950s,ann still do. With a little Enamel Hardner,let it be for a few weeks before buffing.
Never found a need to blow big $ on paint,as prep is what really counts the most.
On the other hand,if your going to park it in the sun every day,black,no matter how much you pay,will go bad fast.

 

"Maybe it's time for a trip to harbor freight to see what Jack's they have....."

Get the air over hydraulic, I replaced my manuals for air-over. You can still use them manually as well.

 

Large mag wheels with the long shank lug nuts are getting hard for me get back on the studs and align the studs to start the lug nuts. I ground the hex head off of a couple of old lug nuts and cut a slot in the top with a cutoff wheel. Now I can screw on two of these guide pins, slide the wheel on, start a couple of lug nuts, and then remove the pins with a screwdriver.

 

I love these simple but slick tricks like this! Good use for those rusty chipped ones you don't throw away 'just because'... LOL

 

When I fixed the brakes on my of topic car last week,I noticed that I need to have better lights
when I am under the car or in the wheelhouse.
So I bought a battery powered LED and a Tablet stand.
Now I have a worklight without a cord, that I can easily direct in a simple way.
Maybe I will change the clamp to a magnet,I`ll try this first.

 

This is clever. I struggle with them too. End up sitting on the ground with the tyre on my lap, using my thighs to lift the wheel up and down to get the lugnuts to align. I end up filthy dirty. Your way is smarter.

Cheers, and thanks,
Harv

 

Good one! I already made some, works great!

 

Absolute genius

 

Having a redhead around would be inspiration for keeping that car looking good

 

While on the subject of lug nuts..........

Friend slightly wrecked his off topic Vette last summer. Broke the wheel in the back and the tie rod as well as some other minor damage. His insurance totaled the car and paid him.....and told him to just keep the car.
After fooling with it for a while, he gave up as he could not get the wheel off the car. All but one lug came off OK. The fifth one wouldn't budge. He got his air chisel and worked it over pretty much destroying any chance of getting a grip on it.......and it sat in a recessed hole. Probably could have melted it away with a torch but he didn't own one and it was too much trouble to haul my torches to his house.

The solution was to use a hole saw that slipped over the lug nut and would cut the aluminum wheel around the stud. Once the hole saw cut thru the wheel, it came right off. Then a simple pipe wrench on the mutilated lug nut and it was off as well.

The thing here is that when going to pick up a "barn find" or a "field find", lug nuts are sometimes impossible to get off and if you can't break them off, you can't put another wheel on the car. So a simple battery powered drill and a correct hole saw will get the wheel off when you are desperate.

 

I keep my taps in drawers along with the correct tap drills for the smaller sizes. Always seemed easier than dragging out the plastic case and finding the small taps in a disarray. I accumulated a lot of drill bits at work over the years and store the extras in drawers also. I have stand up index mounted on my drill press. I have another box index for use in the garage; but I usually grab bits from the one on the drill press when working as it seems handier.

 

I have been thinking about painting the garage floor for over 10 years now.
And now is the time,but I wanted to at least wire brush the floor first, but I didn`t want it to dust up to much.
So I took a cardboard box and grinder and my vacuum cleaner,and it became a spark and dust catcher,not Heavy Duty but it was enough to do the job.

 

Made a hammer jack for patches on my 33 dodge window garnish mouldings...may even be able to build a complete one from scratch with it

 

That's excellent! And I never would've thought of that.

 

Have a '39 FORD transmission for sale, Got a PM saying I should post the rebuild stand here. So...........

 

While surfing the net I watched one of those sites that show tricks with tools and such, most are kinda lame! But today I saw something that was cool, or at least I thought it was! I couldn’t get a picture ,but it’s fairly easy to explain.
Just take a hacksaw blade and screw it to your wall, horizontally, with the teeth up. Maybe with a thin washer behind it. Then slide your sheet of sandpaper up from the bottom, to the desired height/length and fold it over and tear it off! I haven’t tried it, as I do very little body work, but it looked cool!






Bones

 

I got tired of trying to use my shrinker - stretcher set by hand. It was too difficult to try and hold the work piece and get consistent movement. My work bench has receiver holes, so I designed a bracket and had two of them cut out of 3/8 plate at SendCutSend.

I then used an old 4 link bar to create the lower pedal assembly and used some rod ends with some metal conduit tube for the actuator arm. Welded the lower bracket to my work bench and hooked the return spring to the ground lug on my bench and I have to admit that it works pretty damn well. I should have done this years ago.

 

A couple of small tools for rebuilding stromberg carbs. An emulsion tube puller and a short jet wrench so you can change jets without removing the carb.

 

I have also posted this in the LITTLE TIPS AND TRICKS FOR GARAGE HOBBYISTS thread but thought it might be useful here as well - hopefully no one gets upset about the double up.

I am getting ready to do the final paint on my 1932 pickup and to do so I want to paint the cab off the chassis. I wanted the cab to on wheels and also for the dolly to be height adjustable. After much head scratching and searching we came up with the idea of using an electric hospital bed. I found one on marketplace for $100 and stripped off the extra bits I don't need to get to



and now I can do



or this



or any height in between

 

Genius....... pure genius. Were does one look to by an old working electric hospital bed???

 

Facebook market place ( it seams facebook is good for something after all)

 

I straighten stainless steel trim occasionally. I made a couple of tools to help me work the dents out of a couple of cheap harbor freight welding clamps.

One rolls out the dents using two ball bearings similar to an English Wheel. The lower bearing has a slight crown to it. You can use the tool as a hand held or clamp it in a vise.

The other tool is my adjustable pecker. It has an adjustable point that pushes metal up from below into a round hole that is like a die. You can adjust the tool to how much you need to push up. The round die enable you to site directly into the area you are needing to push up.

 

I'd like to see these tools in action.