Dictionary of Tools


Air Compressor: A machine that takes energy produced in a power plant hundreds of miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a pneumatic impact wrench, which grips rusty bolts and promptly rounds them off. These tools are also useful to over-torque lug nuts and warp brake rotors.

Aviation Metal Snips: See Hacksaw.

Battery Electrolyte Tester: A handy tool for transferring battery acid from your car battery to the inside of your toolbox, after determining that your battery is dead as a doornail, just as you thought.

Bolt/Stud Extractor: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes that is ten times harder than any known drill bit and is therefore impossible to remove.

Craftsman 1/2 x 16-Inch Screwdriver: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.

Drill Press: A tall upright machine that is useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest, sending important things you've kept piled safely nearby flying to the far corners of the garage.

Eight-Foot Long Douglas Fir 2x4: Used for levering a car up off a hydraulic jack.

Electric Hand Drill: Normally used for spinning steel pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age. It also works great for drilling roll bar mounting holes in the floor of the car, just above the brake lines.

Gasket Scraper: Theoretical uses of this tool include spreading mayonnaise, although most find service as an extraction tool, to remove dog doo off your shoe.

Hacksaw: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

Hammer: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the modern hammer is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive car parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

Hydraulic Floor Jack: Used for lowering your car to the ground after you have installed a set of lowering springs, trapping the jack handle under the front air dam.

Mechanic's Knife: Used to slice open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on boxes containing convertible tops or tonneau covers.

Oxyacetylene Torch: Used almost entirely for lighting those stale garage cigarettes that you've kept safely hidden away for years on end, because you can never seem to remember to buy fluid for that Zippo lighter.

Phillips Screwdriver: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans so oil is splashed on your shirt. It can also be used effectively, as the name implies, to round-out Phillips screw heads.

Phone: Used to call your next-door neighbor to see if he/she has another hydraulic jack you can borrow.

Timing Light: A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease buildup on crankshaft pulleys.

Trouble Light: A mechanic's portable tanning booth. Also called a "drop light," it is a good source of vitimin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105-mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the Battle of the Bulge. It is more often dark than light; its name is therefore somewhat misleading.

Two-Ton Hydraulic Engine Hoist: An indispensible tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps that you've forgotten to disconnect.

Tweezers: A tool used for removing Douglas Fir splinters.

Vise-Grips: Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

Wire Wheel: Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench (in this respect, it is a cousin of the Drill Press).

Zippo lighter: See Oxyacetylene Torch.