One way to find a potential car deal in these wild times is to get a vehicle that needs a little bit of work like a new bumper or interior pieces. It’s how I got a reliable Volkswagen Touareg for just $1,700. Fixing those body and interior issues after getting a good deal can be overwhelming, but this little tool can help.
Over the last few weeks we’ve used two tools at once with the pass-through ratchet, cleaned up with an ultrasonic cleaner and kept our batteries full with a solar-powered battery trickle charger. This week’s Cool Tool is a right angle drill adapter.
Driving David Tracy’s Lexus LX 470 earlier this year spoiled me. That SUV had it all. It could tow and off-road all while you sat in supple leather seats. The luxury SUV bug hit me and I had to get my own, albeit at a fraction of the budget.
I landed on a 2005 Volkswagen Touareg with the 3.2-liter VR6 and some body damage. It was hard to say no to the price I paid for it.
My first job with this SUV was to get it into presentable shape. The tailgate looked like it took on Thor’s hammer and the taillights were a broken mess covered in packing tape. The bumper cover was so broken that it couldn’t be saved.
Thankfully, there is no shortage of broken Touaregs offering up their parts to keep others on the road, so I found a new tailgate and rear bumper cover in no time.
Bumpers often have several screws holding them on, many positioned in a way that hides them from view. That’s good for aesthetics, annoying for service.
In the case of the Touareg, a number of those neatly-hidden screws are in the wheel wells, but removing them wasn’t much of a problem because my tools easily fit in the gaps between the tires and wheel wells.
But what if you’re working with something that isn’t an SUV? Chances are, the gap between the wells and the tires will be so slim that you aren’t getting tools in there without removing the wheels. And if you can get a tool in there, it might be a slow hand tool.
That’s where a right angle drill adapter comes in.
This tool extends the reach of a drill or impact driver out and to a right angle, delivering torque to an area it wouldn’t normally fit into. Now, you can zip off those fasteners inside of the wheel well with ease. And should your work require the removal of wheel well liners, it can be used for that, too.
Check one out in action on Big Truck Big RV on YouTube:
You can even use it to get at those similarly hidden interior fasteners. And if you want to see how tough they can be, Project Farm put a bunch to the test!
These run pretty cheap. A DeWalt model similar to the one in the above video is about $20. A Milwaukee model runs about $25.
Do you know of a weird or unique tool that wrenchers can benefit from? Do you want to see us put a type of tool to the test and see how it performs? Shoot me an email or drop it down in the comments!