Tools You Did Not Know You Need

I did not know I needed this. 

Tubing straightener

Because brakelines straitened by hand always look bad and are not really straight 

Yeah... I should get one of those... I'm sure it'll be one of those tools that will sit for ages before I use it, but when I do it will make me happy.

I worked on a project in a conduit factory a couple of years ago. The forming dies used to turn a flat strip of steel into a round conduit looks similar to this tool, except the assembly is about 12 feet long and has a massive 2600 volt DC, liquid cooled welder at the end that runs continuously for hours on end.  It was an amazing process to watch.

Up here in the north east brake line replacement is almost a scheduled maintenance item. 

I've been curious about those, and then saw NOHOME's trick the other day of grabbing one end in a vise, the other with a pair of vise grips (sacrificial bits at each end, I'm sure), and giving vise grips a good whack. About halfway down this page.

I can hear Alton Brown in my head talking about Unitaskers when I look at the tool above, but it might be awesome.

At some point if you work on cars long enough you look at a unitasking tool as a victory trophy for getting the job done. 

Oh and I am a huge Alton Brown fan!!!!!

I was a spring maker for 10 years, it looks like a wire straightener except wire straighteners are multi plane.

When I do line replacement it is usually most of the car and since many cars use odd size fittings I will re use them and just purchased a roll of brake line. Put this tool in a vice and build a wooden stand to hold the roll in the proper orientation when you pull it through would mean a unlimited supply of strait line to what ever length I want. 

There is a reason specialised tools are specialised.

Confucius say: "Do one thing well, do many things E36 M3ty"

Ransom said:

I've been curious about those, and then saw NOHOME's trick the other day of grabbing one end in a vise, the other with a pair of vise grips (sacrificial bits at each end, I'm sure), and giving vise grips a good whack. About halfway down this page.

I can hear Alton Brown in my head talking about Unitaskers when I look at the tool above, but it might be awesome.

I can't picture this.  The vise-grips go flying across the room?

In reply to mikeatrpi :

I'm not 100% certain. My impression is that you hit the vise-grips so that you induce a force in line with the brake line, and the high momentary load pulls the curves out of the line. His results look pretty good, though I'm puzzled, because I'd think you'd need to exceed yield on the "short" side of the bend to get it to straighten out, and I can't see that happening. I may have misinterpreted the technique.

I could really use one of these right now. But since I'll only ever use it one or twice, I wish there was a $40 Harbor Freight alternative.

In reply to mainlandboy :

Homemade version?

My usual technique is to roll it on a concrete floor. This does look a bit better.

mikeatrpi said:

Ransom said:

I've been curious about those, and then saw NOHOME's trick the other day of grabbing one end in a vise, the other with a pair of vise grips (sacrificial bits at each end, I'm sure), and giving vise grips a good whack. About halfway down this page.

I can hear Alton Brown in my head talking about Unitaskers when I look at the tool above, but it might be awesome.

I can't picture this.  The vise-grips go flying across the room?

 I wonder if NOHOME could youtube us dummies some learnin.

Trans_Maro said:

There is a reason specialised tools are specialised.

Confucius say: "Do one thing well, do many things E36 M3ty"

That's a good looking hammer.

stanger_missle said:

Trans_Maro said:

There is a reason specialised tools are specialised.

Confucius say: "Do one thing well, do many things E36 M3ty"

That's a good looking hammer.

I was just wondering if there was anything other than hammerin' that those do well.

In reply to RealMiniParker :

That one has a handy vernier on the side so you can use it to quickly see what size wrench you should get.

I don't know what you guys are doing with your adjustable wrenches but I get plenty of use out of mine! Yeah they're no replacement for an end wrench of fixed size but the fixed wrench is also useless where the adjustable shines!

In reply to Knurled :

My introduction to SAE Formula Hybrid was writing 25 times on the whiteboard "I will not use a Youngstown Micrometer on precision racing equipment"

I have one of those brake tubing straighteners here at the shop and while I feel it is a bit overpriced for what you get, it is also a fantastic tool and crucial to getting really sharp looking lines. Stainless, Cunifer, mild steel... It doesn't care what you throw at it. It is also quite adept at straightening misbends so you don't have to scrap a piece because you bent it 0.75" too far inside the line.

This Alfa with the double brake master setup was the first job I used it on.

Heck I just used it yesterday to take a kink out of a piece of 5/8" DOM that someone stepped on.

In reply to dculberson :

You need one of these:

It takes two moderately useless tools and combines them into something I use damn near every time I'm in the garage.  

RossD said:

mikeatrpi said:

Ransom said:

I've been curious about those, and then saw NOHOME's trick the other day of grabbing one end in a vise, the other with a pair of vise grips (sacrificial bits at each end, I'm sure), and giving vise grips a good whack. About halfway down this page.

I can hear Alton Brown in my head talking about Unitaskers when I look at the tool above, but it might be awesome.

I can't picture this.  The vise-grips go flying across the room?

 I wonder if NOHOME could youtube us dummies some learnin.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/l69F750POGw

This is the one posted quite a while ago here that I learned it from.

That's like magic!!

My personal favorite tool was one recommended to me when I started in aircraft maintenance: Husky Reversible Microdriver.

1/4" on one end 5/16" on the other, offset, reversible short arc, and holds bits. I couldn't believe how many 1/4" nuts were on an ERJ145 aircraft so it was super useful there. I use it on my cars all the time when I need to get to some fastener that's hidden out of the way.

A close second for me are offset 15/60 degree offset wrenches in AN sizes eg: 1/2 (-8), 5/8 (-10), 3/4 (-12) in my case. No fluid fitting is safe from me and they're great for tight areas.