What are some must have tools for working on cars?

what are some must have tools for working on cars?

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go to Lowe's and pick up a beginners automotive toolbox. it'll have pretty much the essentials in there. then get a breaker bar and torque wrench and you're ready

Go to Harbor Freight for the torque wrenches. Even without the coupons, they sell them for much less than anywhere else. Home Depot will charge you $75 for a torque wrench, HF will charge you $20 without a coupon and $10 with a coupon.

While you're there, you might as well compare their beginner toolsets with the other places too. Not sure if Lowe's offers a lifetime warranty on the tools they sell, HF does, but you have to be careful, some of the tools HF sells don't have it.

Anyone who's professional will give you grief for having HF tools, but if you're just a casual pleb, it's perfectly fine to use HF.

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Socket set & ratchet spanners are bare minimum IMO.

With that you can do oil changes, exhaust changes (catbacks, headers, etc etc), brake changes (pads, rotors). I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things.

This... Just grab some 3/8 and 1/2 inch kits with short sockets. Get some locking pliers (vice grips), some socket extensions, a breaker bar, spanners and Jack stands.

You can do most backyard jobs with just these and all this should be no more then $100 with coupons, especially if you spread it out day by day. Coupons can be found online.

It amazes me how many dumb kids don't have tools but "modify" their car. I sold this kid a k20 header last week and he didn't even have Jack stands or a proper floor.

Are Harbor Freight torque wrenches worth it? I'm a poorfag who still needs a torque wrench

'nother poorfag question:
>car jack
or
>jack stands

Which one can I get away with buying at Harbor Freight? I'd assume the jack, since the stands would be taking more abuse over time.

Work on your car and grab shit as you go. Same with everything that needs tools, except maybe surgery.

Get a proper jack, and some good steel jack stands without a jacking function

You'll need a lot of basics, which is what you'll be using for 95% of the time. Sockets, wrenches, breaker bar, screw drivers, flat drivers, torx drivers, hex drivers, hydraulic jack, jack stands, crimping tools, cables, cable shoes

Two sets of wrenches/spanners are also a must

From there on you kinda just add to what you already have. Hammer for breaking stuff loose, oil filter cups, air compressor, assortments of bolts, steel line wrenches, torque wrenches, clip pullers and so on

Thanks, fellow non-jewish goy-- gentiles. I will definitely look forward to saving my shek-- money by purchasing my jack stands at HF

>never seen a defective jack stand come back in
Probably because when a jack fails, the owner dies
:3

I think you need to learn about the different kind of jacks and stands first.

youtube.com/watch?v=8OyzbGDn6xg

>How long have you had yours?
Bout 5 years, still works great
Stay mad

Buy a real jack.

That piece of shit wouldn't fit under anything but a truck

10mm socket

Buy a fucking 20-pack while you're at it

>It amazes me how many dumb kids don't have tools but "modify" their car.
They pay someone else to do it.

You need to park the car on wood pieces to give clearance

I already know all that stuff, but thanks. was just asking where I could cheap out on

Thx, dogfucker

I have to do that with my slammed miata, even with a low profile jack.
That's a slammed car tho, if you just buy a low profile jack you wont need wood blocks 99.99% of the time.

I'm too old for slammed cars. But I wish I had the low profile one for that reason.

i love these things

i love my toe in gauge for checking alignments. sadly this was passed down onto me, and i fucking never see new ones for sale in the tool trucks.

>non-Jewish goy
How redundant

that thing looks pretty cool, looks pretty simple in design, I should make one

Jack + stands
Multimeter
ODB Scanner(if your car has it)
Spanner and socket set
Multigrips
Filter remover (+oil pan etc)
Torch
Sprays (wd or whatver)
Tubes (gasket seal or whatever)

All this is a good start, get other stuff as you need it

it sure beats the string way

Make sure you get one in SAE and metric :^)

>Torch
As in "flashlight", or as in "blowtorch"?

Get some real tools nigger

>Not having a spare hubcap that you screw your torpedo level into, then fucking going to town with a rubber mallet.

Diyfag here, why do you auto guys shit all over crescents? They're pretty fucking handy, just not for cars.

a level? that would be good for camber right? how would you get toe in with just a level

>tfw my garage + workbench is a mess
>garage is almost as hot as a sauna
>don't want to open the door and let my normie suburban judgmental neighbors place their eyes upon me while I'm doing stuff
>still have to cowboy up and clean everything + organize it

You can't, he's obviously nocar
I like to use the harbor freight digital levels to set camber tho, they work really good, accurate to 1/10th of a degree, works great for setting pinion angle too

Get your life together and clean your garage. And nobody is judging you for working in a garage. Judge them for not working

This, I used one to get my sway bar links off, they had a small flat part that only my crescent wrench could go small enough to get a good grip on so I could undo the bolt without twisting the whole piece

"flashlight" we call it a torch here senpai

a blowtorch might help, but you really dont need one for basic stuff, can come in handy though.

You say that but I have the most judgmental (white, possibly jewish) middle-aged lady widow living across the street from me.

the heat is mostly what dissuades me

Fuck cares what she thinks. She's probably just mad that her husband had an oven accident.

Harbor Freight sells shop fans. Stop making excuses.

>Buy shop fan
>Crack garage where they can only see your feet
>Clean

Lmao

Air Impact with a 1/2 inch drive. Air compressor. Jack stands, jack. Mechanics tool set. Torque wrench. Breaker bar. Pans for oil/trannyfluid/coolant. That's a good start from what I can think of. Honestly once you start working on cars you'll just go out and buy the tool you need once you figure out you need it.

I own a big 'ol shop fan. I just have no reliable way to circulate the air in there since there's no window and the only doors are the garage door and the door from the house into the garage

>Stop making excuses.
no

Probably gonna end up doing this. Although with two fans so I can get some kind of circulation going on, I guess.

>her husband had an oven acciden
lol, I'm using this

what are some good books to learn about auto mechanics and can i do it with a low iq

>what are some good books to learn about auto mechanics
The haynes/chilton manual for whatever shitbox you own/want to work on

>can i do it with a low iq
at the risk of turning this thread into /pol/bait:
if illegal-immigrant-"eh I no speak mucho engleech" Juan can do it...you should be able to

You buy the haynes/chilton manual for whatever shitbox you've got and fix things that are broke

what if i dont have a shitbox to work on yet and want to lear more general knowledge first

Get a shitbox off craiglist and fix it up

Then you can either sell it for more and hopefully profit, or you have yourself a shitbox to break and fix

I mean you could watch some videos on the youtubes, but nothing beats these:
Get a $500 "it runs but needs work" shitbox off Craigslist and drive it home. Find a Haynes/Chilton manual for it, and start looking at it with soft eyes trying to list down everything you can notice that's fucked up with the car. Another neat thing about DIY fixing your shitbox nowadays is that you can go on the internet and find a forum/posts with owners of the same year+model shitbox as yours who may or may not have run into the same problems as yours.

>tl;dr: scrape up $500-1500 and go look for a "runs but needs work" shitbox on CL then go from there

ok guys I got the jack stands stop bullying me now

Scotty "Hardened Man" Kilmer buys from HF and Veeky Forums should too

snappon is better than nippon

how unnecessary are these?

that company makes better ratchets. buy them

pretty sure at his age only certain medications can get you hardened

A full set of metric and US socket wrenches and other similar things twisty-things, like pic related. Got that set from my dad for my 19th birthday, it's served me well for years.

those ratchets don't look like they have flex heads. how did you find getting at hard to access nuts / bolts?

...

a vacuum gauge

And it won't lift a truck. That thing is a useless toy.

>flex heads
Faggot.

That's a cute little air compressor you have there. Mine is no monster, but 100' feet of hose, and a copper hard line carries air to my workbench. I never have to move it, even to air up a neighbor's tires.

>no harbor freight jack/jack stands?
Just remember harbor freight uses cast steel that is poured then stamped into final shape. So it is not exactly good forged steel on that big vertical arm. Always inspect them for microstress cracks if you drop them.

get the tekton from amazon instead

Wait it also has a ratcheting end? That's kinda cool tbqh

...

When you buy ratchets make sure to buy those weird ball joints and other misc extendo bits.

You'll be hardpressed when you find a piece of shit bolt in a stupid fucking place and you'll need to daisy chain a bunch of random extensions to get to it. Trust me on this. Bolts are fucking stupid sometimes.

So they're ok as long as I don't drop them and be rough with them? Got some 3ton ones yesterday for $17 after the coupon

My uncle bumblefuck has one of those thumb detecting nut fuckers.

I just bought this
am I fucked for car work?

impact wrench.
Nothing worse than having to cancel a diy work on the car for a rusted bolt in a hard to reach place.

No, they're pretty handy.

You'd need some normal sockets and a ratchet as well though, as you'll be pretty fucked with extension bars etc.

Does anyone here /channellock/?
How good are they?

The HF 3 ton low profile jack is really nice for $100

Fingers are pretty useful. Try not to lose them

I'm too poor for an air compressor, are the electric "impact wrenches" worth it, or should I just save my money

thats a breaker bar dipshit

Wrong. It's a flex ratchet

They're good for getting wheels off and stuff

They only save a few seconds, but they're good for torquing bolts to spec

kEk cant argue there

Corded? I'm a gigapoorfag so ill probably get it at HF as well

One of these makes it super convenient

Cordless. Personally I'd look for a lightly used one on Craigslist. Tools on craigslist go for stupid cheap pretty often

17, 19, 21, and 22 mm 1/2" drive deep sockets (impact rated if for use with air tools)
1/2" drive breaker bar
Torque wrench or impact gun and torque sticks
Set of combination wrenches Metric 6 mm to 22 mm
Socket set 3/8" drive metric 4mm to 19mm
Set of 3/8" drive extensions 1", 3", 6", and 12"
Linesman pliers
Needlenose pliers
Side cutters
Screw driver set and/or bit set with nut driver
Large flat head #3 screwdriver or pry bar
Ballpeen hammer
Multimeter or voltmeter

Patience and logic.

Cooling fan incident?