Tapping holes is no cause for concern until you break a tap in the hole. To prevent binding the tap and risking breakage, turn the tap a 1/2-turn forward and a 1/4-turn backwards, then repeat until completed. You will never break a tap again, as the 1/4-turn rearward clears the tap debris.
This one is more for modern cars then hot rods but we didn’t know about it until we found this blurb in “Trucks” So we thought we would share it anyway.
Most any manufacturer nowadays has an electric in-tank fuel pump. Leading cause of death? Overheating due to low fuel levels. Today’s pumps are actually cooled by the fuel and when the tank gets too low, the pump is exposed and gets hot. The pump actually starves momentarily as you stop, go, and corner, which only adds to the problem. Don’t wait until the light is on to refuel
We all spill and sadly guys we are adults now and Mom is not there to clean it up for us. But more to the point, how many times have you griped over the cost of “Super Clean” or another related clean up products. Spilling fluid of any kind on the garage floor is still best handled with kitty litter. It works better than any commercial absorber and doesn’t have any dust in it.
Draping a sheet or towel over your workbench area when working on something small with lots of parts that could scatter will help you to find them more easily. Leave the material loose and lumpy instead of smooth, and anything that gets dropped or falls will sit in the material instead of rolling off the bench and into a dark crevice.
Not exactly rocket science in this day and age, but wrapping tape around a drill bit at a pre measured length makes an easy depth-gauge point to stop drilling.
Truck seem low on power? Could be a dead cylinder. An easy way to check, if you have headers, is to either mist or drop water on each header tube where it exits the head. The dead cylinder will be the one that stays wet.
If you have to hold a nut where your fingers can’t reach and the tape trick with a socket or box wrench won’t fit either, a dab of grease on the end of a standard screwdriver will hold the nut in place and is slim enough to get the nut where it’s needed.
At a show and you forgot the bug and tar remover, but a greasy flying beast’s carcass is smeared across the chrome? Use your girl’s nail polish remover to instantly remove the mess. Be sure not to get any on the paint, though, as acetone is a great paint remover as well.
I recently acquired upright vacuum cleaner bags at a rummage sale for a quarter…
…I cut each bag in half, and now have 12 filters for my shop vac for two bits.
It was such a good idea I felt like I was stealing!
I constantly pick up the free cars-for-sale shoppers from the gas station. I pull the two staples out of the spine, drape the pages over a clothes hanger and have an unlimited supply of free shop rags. The pages work well for soaking up oil.
