Internet tools that help your hotrodding.

It's taken me a long time to get on the right career path to where I can start spending money on my own rod. I absolutely LOVE the homemade tool thread, but as I'm still in an apartment, space doesn't give me the luxury to build a lot of large tools. The few tools I have built for myself are construction hand tools that I often use in the field. However, I still wanted to contribute and I haven't wasted the time over the years doing nothing, even if I couldn't have car parts in my hands. I've taken a lot of time to educate myself learning things, and of course the internet has become a powerful learning tool. Lots of us spend hours on the internet reading about builds, and when we come across something we bookmark it because it's an important learning tool. So here's a few things that I've come across that make the internet a lot more useful as a car building aid.

http://www.cutepdf.com/ - Cutepdf - Ever come across a website with some really useful stuff but it's just too much information to process at one time and you need to come back and refer? You could bookmark it and come back, or you could save the web page. But saving the web page is often clunky saving a bunch of unnecessary stuff on your hard drive, some images don't save, etc. Bookmarks can fail when the site goes down, offline, or just plain changes, or maybe you just lose your internet!

In comes Cutepdf to save the day. Save your web page as a complete printable pdf file, giving you 100% pdf compatibility, meaning you can zoom, page down, etc. etc. Never lose an important web page again. Cutepdf emulates a printer and "prints" the web page to a file you save on your hard drive where you can print it with your regular printer, or come back and view it again and again.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/ The Wayback Machine - So what if you already bookmarked a web page, but you went back to view it and it was a dead link! Sites like Mortec that had valuable engine casting numbers, carb numbers, etc that aren't available anymore? How about doing a search on a message board and finding out that a link someone posted or an image in the thread is gone and the article is no longer helpful? That's where the wayback machine comes in. Pop your URL into their search engine and come up with a list of "captures" where the web site was archived! Find web sites that have already been taken down since 2002 or earlier.

Example:

Here's a page that I saved detailed how a guy built a jig to swap over a Ford 9" axle to his 4th generation malibu. He transferred all his coil and shock mounts, brake mounts etc. to the 9" and mounted it.

The original web site is down:
http://malibunorth.freeservers.com/Ford_9.htm

But here comes the wayback machine to step in and lend a hand:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041208103057/http://malibunorth.freeservers.com/Ford_9.htm

Most of the images are completely restored and all the documentation is there.

I find these two tools to be invaluable for certain technical referencing. In the past I found myself deciding to not save something because hell... I can just bookmark it. I don't make those mistakes anymore.

Anyone else have any useful tools they want to share? Here's a nice tire calculator that tells you what tire profiles can be cross referenced and even how much your speedometer is off when you swap tire/rim sizes:
http://www.miata.net/garage/tirecalc.html#

I hope you guys find these things as useful as I do.

Mathius

 

I've got probably 500 links saved on my Yahoo bookmarks for sites that have useful info. It may be something as simple as a bearing or seal number to help with a hub swap and it may be in-depth instructions on how to do a frame swap complete with diagrams for special parts.

 

I'm right there with you, I mean that's what bookmarks are for. But sometimes sites change. If it's really important I pdf it. And the waybackmachine is really helpful in finding those old links when you lose them. Here's another tool I use because living in an apartment I have to work at other's houses a lot.

http://www.startaid.com/ - Startaid - Lets you save your bookmarks online. Have multiple computers or just simply travel to other people's houses? Save your bookmarks online and you can access them anywhere. In addition, there is a plugin for Firefox that allows you to have these online bookmarks automatically loaded into your browser like your normal bookmarks.

Mathius