OUTFITTING YOUR AUTOMOTIVE WORKSHOP

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Buy regular shaft-and-handle screwdriver sets in the most frequently used sizes of regular and Phillips bits. Get top-quality, long- and short-handled drivers in as big a set as you can find; driver bits vary in width and thickness to precisely fit different sizes of screw head. The more drivers in a set, the smaller will be the difference between one and the next, so the tighter can be your driver-to-fitting fits. Ill-fitting driver bits will ruin screw heads.

I use Stanley screwdrivers purchased at discount from the mall. The quality can't be beat and the handles are sized, shaped, and colored differently for various sizes and between Standard and Phillips ...so you can grab the correct driver by feel or by looking at the handle, rather than peering through the under-chassis gloom at the tiny little bit end. My favorites also have slight ridges on the bits and are magnetized so they hold screws one-handed.

But for TORX and the other peculiarities, you can buy a handle-and-bit set from the mall. Driver bits of all kinds are made to fit into a single handle/holder with a magnetized hex-socket or put in an electric drill. Get a set that contains with V,"- and V-drive sockets to hold the bits as well, so you can manipulate the bits with your ratchets. The few bits that you use often for me, Phillips heads used to drive drywall screws in woodworking-will bruise quickly, but you can get replacements.

Odd Bits

One type of specialized star-bit that comes on 3/8" drive sockets is essential to remove the bolts that hold on some Ford and GM front brake calipers from the stone blind backside (so you can't see to use imprecise bits). In my experience, they are impossible to find for sale anywhere in time and space but in the JC Whitney catalog: stock# 13NT5588U for $8.99. While you are at it, order a Seal Driver Kit: #13NT21098 for $19.99, with 16 adapters so you can insert grease seals into front axles, tranny's, and crankshafts evenly and easily without ruining the seal or bearing, losing tube, or all three. If your car is a late model, you may also find "E"-series starbolts in odd places, and will need an eight-piece socket set: JCW #12NT7319T for $14.99.

Also, get a full 18-piece set of "hexkeys"six-sided bare-metal shafts bent 90 degrees at one end, which you'll need to loosen set screws that hold keepers and pulleys on shafts. You don't need them often, but you need them absolutely when you need them at all. They must be of hard, but springy steel. Mall store versions will bend and bruise in a single use, so get better quality from Sears or NAPA. Get an assortment of the little headless, pointy-ended set-screws, too. Tiny, they are easily lost.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print