OUTFITTING YOUR AUTOMOTIVE WORKSHOP

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BE WARY OF AUCTIONS: Too many people end up catching "bidding fever" and finish the day paying more for tools than if they went to a department store.

Otherwise, you can look for old tools at barn sales, tag sales, and yard sales in country towns. Be wary of auctions; you can contract a case of bidding fever and end up overpaying several times what an item is worth. Often, you'll find unorganized assortments of rusty but restorable old tools, nails and bolts, old iron and whatnot jumbled in crates, and you can walk off with the lot for a dollar or two.

Avoid buying no-name or house-brand tool sets from mall stores. Dimensions are liable to be sloppy, corners rounded and steel soft. Wal-Mart and other mass merchandisers label tools with familiar sounding names like Popular Mechanix and Master Mechanic, but suppliers change and quality varies.

Any time you see the distinctive yellow-and-black Stanley label, you can be confident of quality. The company's hand tools are often the most expensive on a mall-store rack, but are fine quality no matter where it's purchased. The top line of Sears Craftsman brand (it has two or more quality levels) is also excellent quality and any Sears retail store will honestly replace any hand tool that breaks. A couple of years ago, I found what must have been a 30year-old Craftsman ratchet-handle in the road. It was gutted-its innards, dial, bit and pawls, and all, had somehow gotten busted out. I took it to town and was given the equivalent currently manufactured (top-of-the-line) model in trade instantly, with no paperwork, argument, or hassle, no appeal to the supervisor or even the computer. Tools from NAPA and other auto supply stores or from Snap-On trucks are also top quality but are high priced.

Magazine merchandisers and the TV home-shopping networks sometimes sell name brand tools at what seem to be superbargain prices. In my experience, these are invariably the bottom lines and of inferior quality to the top lines that cost relatively little more.

Sears, the big auto supply chains, and other mass-merchandisers sell mechanics' tool assortments at exaggerated discounts. They can be top quality ...but, you'll have a thousand bucks invested in tools, half of which you will never use and another 30 percent of which you may use once in a lifetime of amateur automotive repair. And, not even buying a complete mechanic's set will teach you to be a mechanic.

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