TOOLS

Whole encyclopedias have been written about the tools of various trades, car repair included. This chapter covers hand tools, power tools, bench tools, special tools, mechanical gauges, electrical test equipment, and scopes. Some items are things you must have to do a certain repair on your car. Others help you to work faster, but are not strictly necessary.

Before getting into specifics, consider what you do as a home me-chanic that is different from what a pro does. You are trading your time and effort to avoid the high cash outlay required for most minor and some major car maintenance and repair jobs. The pro is making a living by working on cars, trading his time for your money. He works 50 weeks a year. Speed on the job, whether he has to beat a flat rate schedule or just get the work out, is his stock in trade. Thus, if there is a special tool that will save him ten minutes doing a job and the job comes up roughly once a week, that tool saves him 500 minutes a year;about 81/2 hours. Assuming he earns $5 per hour, those 81/2 hours are worth more than $40 to him. If the tool costs $10, he cannot afford not to buy it.

You, on the other hand, will be doing the job once a year or perhaps only once every other year. If there is a way to get the job done;and done right;without that special tool, you can do without it. Otherwise, you will become a tool collector rather than a money-saving home mechanic.

The pro cannot afford anything less than the best because he will be using his tools all day, every day, and better tools mean faster work and more profit. But if you are working on your car purely to save money and avoid the trouble of getting it serviced, then you want the least expensive tool that will effectively do the job. The problem is to know how good is good enough for your purposes. As a rule of thumb, you will find the very cheapest tool is almost always so inadequate that buying it is a waste of money. And the very best is so super-adequate for your purposes that buying it is also a waste of money. So your best bet is the moderately priced tool.