OUTFITTING YOUR AUTOMOTIVE WORKSHOP

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Buying bolts and nuts, hose clamps, and gaskets singly from a hardware store is expensive-and they stock only American coarse and SAE fine threads in mild steel. You will want SAE and metric, steel and brass, "T" nuts, "O" rings, gaskets material and more-in all sizes. Auto supply outlets stock them, but I suggest saving money and many a drive to town for a single nut, bolt, or washer by ordering packaged hardware assortments from the mail order catalogs. Not "1,001 (low-grade) fasteners for $51.11," but good quality fasteners in small lots.

You will want a good-quality hand operated grease gun and cartridges of axle grease and white grease. Buy a good brand of engine oil by the case of cans and recycle the cans. Get squeezable plastic bottles of gear lube that you can squirt in sideways, an assortment of funnels, including one with a long goose neck to use to add fluids in awkward locations. Often you must fabricate a funnel for a tight squeeze; I cut what I need from a roll of 12"-wide aluminum flashing. (You'll need tin snips to do that.)

When antifreeze is on sale in July, get a case. Also small funnel-tipped and spray cans of penetrating oil and light machine oil, and a can of hard bearing grease.

A pop-riveter with a variety of rivet sizes and metals is good to have, though real body shop tools are not common in farm shops. Do get a propane torch, several bottles of propane, and a spark starter. Heating will free up most rusted on nuts, (and will thaw frozen pipes in the house cellar, start charcoal in the barbecue, and more.)

For electrical work, get a selection of solid and stranded hookup wires, a multimeter and a stripping/clinching tool, and a variety of spade lugs and electrical fasteners.

Finally, keep a supply of tapes and wire. Get electrical tape in ordinary black-plastic and shrink-tape, masking tape and the most useful of all: Duct Tape. Don't get "Duck" Tape from the mall, but professional, metalized Duct Tape that contractors use to seal seams on a sheet metal hot-air heating duct. Get wire in soft steel and brass and in several gauges.

Sources

I hope you find a country place that comes complete with a beginning mechanic's heaven: a barn with an undisturbed old-time-farm machine shop in back. You'll find massive screw jacks, jacks, and pry bars, huge old crescent wrenches, blacksmith's tools, nut and bolt assortments, ancient magnetos and kerosene burning carburetors, oil-soaked orange crates and wooden cigar boxes full of parts accumulated over several lifetimes of working on farm machinery.

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