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Chanteuse Katy Perry, shown here trying a new Sesame Street costume, gave hubby Russell Brand a vintage Ford Capri for a wedding present Sunday. Great... if only he knew how to drive. (Photo:AP) [Zimbio] More »
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Seeing all the comments on the Found Junkyard Tools post reminds me of the eternal junkyard question: Do you bring every tool you own or the bare minimum when hitting the junkyard? More »
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When you spend enough time at the junkyard, you're going to find free tools on a regular basis. Some are in the cars when they get scrapped, while others get lost by fellow junkyard dogs. More »
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Believe it or not, there are other uses for trailer hitches than hanging testicles... like gravel driveway grooming. One item many forget to mention about having gravel driveways is the maintenance required. The Driveway Groomer is a simple device that can attach to the rear towing hitch on any vehicle, therefore turning your soccer-mom mobile into a workhorse by allowing it to groom and maintain that gravel driveway of yours. The Driveway Groomer sells for $350, with a miniature version going for $265. [Driveway Groomer via Toolmonger] More »
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We've seen some pretty interesting mods around these parts, but this 110cc quad toolbox has to be one of the more peculiar. I hate to jump to conclusions or make assumptions, but this is really just a 110cc miniature quad sawed in half and welded back to a pretty standard toolbox. The owner says it is used in the pits to easily get the tools around. Yeah, I'll go ahead and say the creators are lazy and creative. [Red Ferret] More »
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How the heck are you supposed to work on your fantasy car without a fantasy garage chock full of tools like MAC's new 10,000-pound professional grade two-post lift? This beauty has a pretty hefty $3,000 price tag and is loaded with enough features to keep your fantasy garage in business through the next decade. More »
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Now that you got that pesky dinner taken care of, how about the after dinner chocolates? Nothing says "I love you just a little bit less than my current project car" than a nice set of gearhead chocolates. More »
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Roses? Check. Candles? Check. Nice dinner in the oven? Check. Beautiful place setting with automotive theme? Negative. It's a shame you forget the smallest parts of your romantic Valentine's Day dinner, such as the nice plates, glasses and silverware. Help is available, however. Say hello to the gearhead place setting. More »
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Nothing says "Thanks Ma" like stripping the hell out of your wheel's lug nuts because you wanted to use a gift. These kits come in "all purpose" "auto specific" and "auto emergency" varieties and all come in a cheap plastic case. The thought is "Hey, this person loves tools, let's get 'em something big and heavy." That's a nice thought &mdash but what the hell is someone going to do with those cheap ass gloves? More »
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The "old days was better" thing can really get run into the ground (e.g., drum brakes, no antibiotics), but when it comes to certain things it's tough to argue with the sentiment. Mechanic's creepers, for example; these days, mostly what you get when you buy a creeper is about two weeks before ball bearings start spitting out of the cheap-ass casters and the thing starts scraping the concrete and you curse the downward spiral of manufacturing quality et cetera. So I was pretty happy when I scored this Hulbert's Smash-Proof at a yard sale for five freakin' bucks! It really is smash-proof; I'm pretty sure I could use it for moving large appliances down a gravel driveway and it would laugh at the so-called abuse. And check out all the cool tags and labels; I'm guessing it's from the 1940-60 period. More »
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Back when the dot-com boom fell apart and I got laid off from my cushy software tech-writing gig (at a company that had once promised a private chef, rock-climbing wall, and customized surfboards with the company logo for its employees), I fell back on a tried-and-true moneymaking scheme: buying towed San Francisco cars at the City Tow auctions, fixing them up, and selling them. It worked out great until I got a '90 Tercel that just wouldn't pass California's super-stringent smog test, no matter what. Long story short, I traced the problem to bad fuel injectors, but what unemployed ex-dot-commer's got money for brand new ones?
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We've all heard the argument of the do-it-yourselfer. Doing the job on your own can bring a sense of satisfaction and save money. When things don't go right the results may not be so warming or economical. Thirteen beers or three fried alternators into a pile of sheared bolts and bruised knuckles can result in a job costing far more than planned. Sometimes the financial outlay in tools, materials, and time, don't add up to any savings for the do-it-yourselfer. Worse still is a job done wrong can be potentially dangerous. Replacing a cracked or old front windshield glass is one of these times. More »
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Back in the days of carbureted and plentiful used Plymouth Satellites, B-52's frontman Fred sang of the devil in his car. Beehive sporting singer Kate did Fred one better by wailing that she had the devil in her CAR-buretor! Having Beelzebub in the float bowl and demons clogging the jets is not a good thing at all. A carburetor rebuild can help exorcise evil spirits. More »
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Along with swapping out the air filter and changing the oil, replacing the spark plugs is one of the few things left that require service on a modern gasoline engine. Some newer than the twenty-year old junk classics in our garage have negated even this task with spark plugs made of space-age materials that can live with their head stuck in a combustion chamber for 100K miles or more. The first and most obvious task of the spark plug is to light the gasoline and air mixture aflame when the piston reaches the top of its compression stroke. The resulting burn pushes the piston back down in the cylinder. So it goes. The second and less obvious function of a spark plug is equally important. More »
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With the weekend nearly here, it's time to pop open the hood and take a trip down the trail of parts. Those battery terminals and posts that look like a high school science experiment gone wrong need to be cleaned. As long as you're there, find the right dipstick and check the oil. If it looks as if it could be bubbling up from the La Brea Tar Pits, then bust out the ramps or jack and jack stands and change the oil and filter. If the oil was that filthy, then checking and swapping out the air filter might not be a bad idea. After all that it will certainly be time to wash those microscopic contaminants and grubby hand prints off the car so you can look good while driving to get a Coney Island. More »
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The automobile contains a number of fluids that should all stay where they're supposed to be. Oil spots, coolant leaks, mystery drips, and other tell tale signs of fluids leaving their rightful place in the automobile are a sign to take heed of maintenance. Denying the existence of the ever-growing number of oil spots on the driveway is not going to make them go away. The source of the leak needs to be fixed. More »
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In our explorations into parts and parts replacement, we often mention the service manual. While there are certainly a large part of the monkeywrenching public who would throw directions to the wind, instructions can be a good thing when it comes to things like working brakes and wheels not falling off the car. Finding the service manual can be half the battle. Read on for a few tips for locating the books for everything from a 1971 Ford Pinto Rallye to a late-model Honda That's. More »
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While there is a difference between brake pads and shoes, the desired result is always the same when the foot goes down on the brake pedal. Brake pads clamp down onto a rotating disc. Brake shoes push out Flintstones-style onto a rotating drum. Inertia gets turned into heat via the miracle of friction. If all goes well things slow down. Each time the brake pads clamp themselves onto the rotor to put on the whoa, a small amount of the pad itself turns to dust. A smaller amount of the brake rotor also turns to dust. Brake pads are by design supposed to wear out, and for obvious reasons should be inspected and replaced once in a while. Read on for a brake pad bonanza. More »
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The fluid that exists as brake fluid is in reality hydraulic fluid. The helpful property of brake fluid is that it cannot be compressed. This comes in handy when the brake pedal is pushed down. Brake fluid links the parts of the brake system together as one. Brake pedal goes down. Friction is achieved! A hydraulic clutch also uses this same principle, and brake fluid to make shifting happen. An unfortunate property of brake fluid is that it is hygroscopic. Over time brake fluid draws moisture into itself all by itself. Bleeding the brake lines of air is an important step after brake work, and is also helpful to purge contaminated brake fluid from the brake lines. More »
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Mechanical know how in our case has come largely from two sources. There have been those kind enough to show the way, and there has been the hard way. A long and proud lineup of 500-dollar cars has steered us mostly down the latter route. The way we learned about how and why to run a compression check on an engine came only after bolting on every conceivable replacement part to a 318 V-8 in a 500-dollar '67 Plymouth Barracuda in an effort to make the thing run better. A compression check revealed that the engine was closer to a V-5 and-a-half than a V-8. More »
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For a long number of years even the idea of washing and waxing our car was unnecessary. Cleanup meant maybe a hosing off, and adding another layer of rattle can primer to key spots. The first paint job worthy of a wash and wax was a defining moment. Washing and waxing the new paint on the old car was suddenly an exciting novelty! For somewhat newer cars, a regular wash and wax keeps the paint from decaying to the clean it with scrub pad and can of spray paint stage. Sure the local car wash is great, but nothing beats the satisfaction washing and waxing your own ride. More »
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Whichever crackpot invented the wheel had no idea what it would lead to. Land speed records. Plus one measures of gravity on a skidpad. Four-second quarter miles. 30-inch spinners! Multiple volumes of unmentionable bad craziness. And dirt crusted wheels. While filthy wheels may not be of great concern for ox-drawn carts or the old roto-tiller, shabby looking hoops can ruin automotive outward appearances. Rolling in a car with filthy wheels is akin to showing up to a job interview with scuffed-up shoes with holes in the soles. More »
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Automobile wheels spin round thanks to the miracle of wheel bearings. The bearings themselves contain rollers that spin around inside a cage. Wheel bearings are often tapered against the coned races in which they spin in order to handle the lateral forces placed against the wheels when the vehicle turns. Given the right grease and care, most wheel bearings should roll without complaint for 100,000 miles or more. Neglected bearings will tell another tale. More »
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Last week we got down with the strut in MacPherson and said hello to the spring compressor. This week we'll finish things off and put it all back together. More »
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The history behind the modern strut type suspension has its origins in the United Kingdom. Henny Youngman would find a joke here. Something about Scotsmen, a Lotus, a spring, and a shock absorber. The punchline would be the MacPherson strut suspension. I love this crowd! The integral spring and shock absorber arrangement was pioneered by one Earl S. MacPherson. Since Mr. MacPherson worked for Ford at the time as the head honcho of engineering, the MacPherson strut first appeared up under the unitbody front fenders of a 1951 Ford Zephyr. More »
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Without the shock absorber the modern automobile would simply flail about on its springs. The shock absorber is technically a damper. The shock absorber works to dampen the bounce created by bumps in the road and the weight of the vehicle acting on the suspension and springs. The less obvious yet more important benefit of shock absorbers is control. The four small patches of tire making contact with the tarmac won't do much good if the tires are spend more time bouncing in mid-air than staying planted on the ground. As anyone who has ridden in or attempted to pilot a vehicle with blown out shock absorbers can attest, brakes and steering become dangerously ineffective when shock absorbers lose their damping ability. More »
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As we're off to Las Vegas for Mopars at the Strip this weekend and riding the red-eye out to the New York Auto Show next week, the Trail of Parts will remain apart until our return. In the meantime we would like to call upon our readers to suggest both useful and amusing topics for this ongoing exploration into the inner and outer workings of automobiles. Send them to tips@jalopnik.com, or use the comments. In our absence, please enjoy this image of a parted-out Mitsubishi G54B turbo engine. – Mike Bumbeck More »
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It may seem unlikely that the first step in polishing aluminum to a near-mirror shine is to score an extra crusty set of '70s vintage US Indy slot mags of off an equally '70s vintage Toyota SR5 Liftback at the local junkyard. Mag wheels are named as such because the aluminum is mixed up with a bit of magnesium to form a stronger alloy. Over time and with exposure this alloy tends to turn a dull grey. Even the crustiest of aluminum wheels can be brought back to a mirror shine with a fair amount of elbow grease and careful use of cheap power tools. More »
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In order for the miracle of the automotive cooling system to march on unabated all the components must be able to hold up under pressure. The heavy hitter in this equation is the radiator. Inside the radiator are coolant passages. Connected to the passages are the cooling fins. As hot engine coolant passes through the radiator heat gets wicked away through these fins and into the air. Neglecting the cooling system can cause corrosion and even rust to build up inside the radiator until one day it literally cracks under pressure and makes like an underhood Old Faithful. Pressure and tempers are lost along with engine cooling. More »
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So you've got your JB Weld for repairing the big hole that durned exploding whiskey still blew in your radiator, and you always buy the 55-gallon Economy Size drum of Bondo for when you wrap El Busamino around a pine tree. But what to use for reattaching trim pieces, dangling headliners, rearview mirrors, etc? Shoe Goo! Intended for use by those who wish to reattach separated shoe soles (and also a favorite of skateboarders who want to put a better gripping surface on their boards), Shoe Goo also serves as an extremely useful adhesive for "field expedient" car repairs. It's clear, tough, flexible, and will stick to just about any dry surface; I've used Shoe Goo to attach switches to dash panels, reassemble shattered turn-signal lenses, and attach a bowling trophy to the hood of a punkified Datsun B210. As an added bonus, Shoe Goo boasts the most toxic smell this side of starter fluid, so you know it's good. – Murilee Martin More »
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At the heart of the cooling system is the water pump. It spins as does the engine in order to continuously circulate engine coolant through the automotive cooling system. Out from the engine, into the radiator, and then back again. So goes the water-cooled internal combustion engine. If the water pump fails in its task the cooling system will have the automotive equivalent of a heart attack. A few miles outside of Baker, California on a 107-degree day is usually where a water pump clutches its chest and quits. Steam pouring from under the hood and an engine clattering from detonation are sure signs of heart failure. More »
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The situation of random and seemingly unrelated thoughts regularly wandering into our heads is likely thanks to the very large array of daily information bombarding our addled brains. JB Weld presented itself back into rotation at approximately 4:56 PST yesterday. Along with all the shining machines at the Geneva Auto Show, we today celebrate this stuff of miracles, perfect for those of us that still tool around in old buckets classics. Who here with a clunker has not patched a radiator, or quickly repaired an otherwise motorist stranding mechanical problem with this somehow liquid steel? The miracle of two part epoxy is also not lost on the those with digital cameras and hosting. Try JB Weld into Google image search for the grease monkey broken part version of the Louvre. – Mike Bumbeck More »
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The difference between the rows of late model cars at the junkyard awaiting the crusher and Grandpa's 400-thousand mile 1974 Mercury Bobcat Wagon with genuine simulated wood grain paneling is regularly scheduled maintenance. The failure of an inexpensive and easy to replace part can cause a heap of pricey damage. This is especially true of the automotive cooling system thermostat. More »
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While there are still a few air-cooled automobiles on the roads the good majority out there these days are of the liquid cooled variety. Those driving an old Karmann Ghia or a pre-98 Porsche 911 can take the time spent reading this series of articles on the automotive cooling system and instead check their oil frequently. The rest of the liquid cooled vehicle owners out there have three important components under the hood that take the heat out of an internal combustion engine. The radiator, the water pump, and the thermostat. Between all of these components are flexible rubber hoses that transfer the liquid engine coolant. More »
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The modern postal mailbox is a dreary affair. There is but one gem that shows up occasionally among the usual pile of bills, credit card offers, carpet cleaning discount coupons, and sporadic check. The Harbor Freight Tools catalog! In honor of President's Day they sent along an extra thick version, which contained this fine Pneumatic Garden Stool. This thing looks pretty sporty. Supports 220 lbs. PVC Wheels. Adjustable seat. Take a bunch of chairs, add a long grassy hill, and some fearless or just plain stupid individuals might be encouraged to have a race. Rig up some footpegs, a two-stroke engine, and chain drive to one of the wheels and things could get stupid even faster. – Mike Bumbeck More »
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Recent dash light disco electrical mayhem from the Starlet served as a reminder that an automotive electrical system can go haywire at any time. An automobile electrical system comprises three key parts. The battery stores electricity to spin the starter and start the engine. The alternator produces electricity once the engine is running by way of an engine driven belt. The voltage regulator balances the delivery of electrical power between the battery, spark plugs, and hi-fi stereo playing Burt Bacharach. This balance of power will come apart when any one of these three components fail. Starters that click rather than spin and dead batteries can be the result of a spent alternator or fussy voltage regulator. More »
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The internal combustion engine at its core is an air pump. It takes in air, mixes it with fuel, and ignites the mixture to make power. Over the course of even a minute, an engine can breathe in a massive volume of air. A 2-liter engine can inhale nearly 3000 liters of air per minute at cruising speed. That's 1500 2-liter bottles of soda a minute! All of this air enters the engine through the air filter. More »
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The reason to check your tire pressure is usually explained with some nearly unbelievable statistical simile bordering on hyperbole. If everyone checked their tire pressure once a month, we could save enough oil to build comfortable cities on the moon and help kittens. Or something like that. The fact is checking tire pressure on a regular basis can improve handling, increase fuel economy, promote tire longevity, and even save lives. More »
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The scissor or corkscrew jack in your trunk is somewhat adequate for emergency wheel and tire swaps. Drive-on ramps are good for oil changes and whatnot. When it comes time to blow apart the front end, swap out some brake pads, or replace some spent struts, a floor jack and two or more sturdy jack stands are the right tools for the job. More »
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Somewhere in between the two half-disassembled Mitsubishi G54B turbo engines and the Toyota 4K-C internal combustion peanut grinder we depleted our stock of blue gloves. A coming trip to Harbor Freight Tools and the boneyard will soon replenish supplies of both gloves and junk. We take this moment to clean up our tools, and contemplate the miracle of the flexible cylinder ball hone. Our weekly litany of handy automotive maintenance tips will return next Friday.– Mike Bumbeck More »
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