Where did it sit all year??

A pair of water pump pliers spent 300 miles or so of family vacation riding on the air cleaner of dad's '72 Ford Custom 500.

He found them when we got to our destination.

Shawn

On my very first engine rebuild [14 years old- honda xr 75] dropped the key way on a well lit clean floor . Found it that night in the cuff of my jeans . Went back to work and was into the wind by about 10 pm.

I once pulled a freshly built 350 manifold back off, thinking id left one of my sockets in there someplace. I later found it on the shelf where I had been keeping all the new parts...

Some of my favorite tools are ones I've found In cars, usually in trunk wells under the spare, but a few in shock mounts, and radiator supports, and on occasion, wedged in between the exhaust and block.

We where at the Rolex a couple years ago and working on a Porsche 996 and in the front windscreen tray was a very worn leather hammer we guessed that Schultz or Willheim had used in the factory when making the car .

When I got my first grown-up's job in 1974, I bought a new Lotus Europa. When I changed the first flat, I found a small, combination wrench inside the tire. I mean "spanner." Sorry, that's all I got.

I dropped a screw into my old Buick's engine bay once. I've never seen it again. I can also "Amen" the steering rack story: I was changing sparkplugs on my old Toyota once, dropped a ratchet, couldn't find it, grabbed the spare and finished the job. Found it when I tried to pull it out of the driveway: the wagon wouldn't turn. It'd slid down and impaled the steering neatly.

One of the SCR-SCCA AX directors has a 914 Porsche, he left the line one day and something went clinking and rattling away. Turned out to be a 10 mm combination wrench. For the rest of the season every time he parked his car someone would drop a wrench or scrwedriver behind it or when walking the course would hold up a tool and holler 'Has Nick already driven the course?' Of course I never took part in such shenanigans.