Author Topic: What are your favorite hand-made tools?  (Read 1592 times)

Offline midlife

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What are your favorite hand-made tools?
« on: August 18, 2014, 09:25:17 PM »
Mine is a flat-head jeweler's screwdriver that has been ground flat on one side that I use to extract electrical pins from connectors.  After trying what was available in the marketplace and finding them worthless, I stumbled across this trick and have used the same screwdriver for nearly 8 years without it breaking.  The curved surface matches the curved surface of the connector and the flat side pushes the locking tab over to allow the pin to be released. 
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Offline Brian Conway

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Re: What are your favorite hand-made tools?
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2014, 10:51:26 PM »
Nothing as sophisticated as yours.  Brian
5RO9A GT  4 Spd Built 5/29/65
9TO2R SCJ 4 Spd Built 9/19/68
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San Diego, Ca.

Offline 67gtasanjose

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Re: What are your favorite hand-made tools?
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2014, 06:21:56 AM »
Favorite hand made tools?

I make a new one about once a week, been an auto mechanic for +40 years now.

Most recently I made a special "very flat boxed wrench" out of a cheaper 15mm boxed wrench to loosen a camshaft sprocket on a Mazda 3 that had slipped a cog on the timing chain (variable valve timing engine). The camshaft sprockets do NOT have a keyway and there are no timing marks on any of the timing components. Owner had ran the car low on oil and the oil pressure driven chain tensioner allowed slack into the timing chain. When the chain timing (with NO marks) is off, the engine would only "fire and die" as the computer would shut down the spark and injection. Again, these engines use no timing marks and ONLY special tools can line things back up. Cams must be locked wth a flat bar (made that also) that runs between both cams along the top of the head (had that one from previous Contour timing belt failures) and the crankshaft gets locked with a pin through a threaded plug hole behind the right drive axle (axle shaft must be removed) I had to make that too! So that is 3 special tools for one car, probably never will need them again.
After aligning the components (with no marks), car would then start and run. Then I could tell the owner that he now has a rod knocking at 2500 rpm.

A week before that, I made a tool for removing HPOP (high pressure oil pump) lines on a Powerstroke Ford truck out of some old bicycle wrench. Walked the correct size flat steel bike wrech to the bench grinder and 30 seconds later had another new tool! It worked great, online price for the special tool, $80

Richard
« Last Edit: August 19, 2014, 06:28:52 AM by 67gtasanjose »
Richard Urch

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Offline drummingrocks

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Re: What are your favorite hand-made tools?
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2014, 10:46:11 AM »
Mine is a flat-head jeweler's screwdriver that has been ground flat on one side that I use to extract electrical pins from connectors.  After trying what was available in the marketplace and finding them worthless, I stumbled across this trick and have used the same screwdriver for nearly 8 years without it breaking.  The curved surface matches the curved surface of the connector and the flat side pushes the locking tab over to allow the pin to be released.

I have to agree on this.  I've bought two versions of the Snap-On tool to release various connector pins, and I still have better luck using a regular pick set. 
Too much junk, too little time.