Thread: Make your own special tools ?

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I thought there was an old thread about this but I couldn't find it so I'll start another.

I broke all four bolts that hold the front bumper brackets to the frame on my 65 Mustang last week. The welded nuts were inside the boxed frame so I couldn't get at them to heat them with the torch. I drilled out a piece of round bar to fit over the end of the broken 5/8 bolt and then drilled it 1/4 inch through the other side. I put it over the ends of the broken bolt and used a 1/4 inch center drill to start a hole through the center of the bolts. Then I removed the tool and drilled thruogh the bolts with a 1/4 inch drill followed by a 3/16 drill and kept using bigger drills till I drilled out all four bolts. All of the holes were right on center and I didn't hurt the threads.

But that's not why I started this thread. I was going to tell you about the sanding board I made for sanding the roof of the Mustang. Like the one Boyd's working on my roof was a mess from someone walking on it. I made a similar sander when I restored a 65 Porsche 356 but I just stapled some sandpaper to a long board. This time I made it from aluminum bar. The allen screws hold the paper on the sides. It works great on long curved or flat surfaces. There's a picture of it below.

Hot rodders are a clever bunch of guys. I'm sure I'm not the only one who invents things that aren't available. Anybody else got some home made tools to show us?

Back when I had my repair shop I had things like wrenches heated up and bent to fit a specific job. Spark plugs with the centers knocked out and an air coupler brazed on the end to blow air in the cylinder to change valve springs, keepers, etc. The guy that owned the shop before me built his own power hack saw, I wish I had pictures of that, it was well engineered. I built my own car hoist out riggers. I got the hoist from a closed gas station for free just for removing it.. Then built out riggers that folded up and dropped in flush with the concrete floor so when the hoist wasn't needed it was completely out of the way. I could roll a creeper over it with no problems. Made my own hydraulic hose cutter. It was very simple and easy to use and impressed the hyd. hose vendor. He told me to patten it. I shouda' pursued it. Maybe I could be buildin' hot rods full time as a hobby now. He He He .............. O.K. maybe not.
There were a bunch of em' but that was loong ago and I don't have any tools to improve my memory.

Today I haven't been back at it long enough to come up with any tools. I built some jigs for the "Z" but no real tools yet.

My own tools I made huh? Well I am going to be making my own bead blasting cabinet and spray booth for powder coating. One day when I have the time and money I plan on building my own english wheel as well. I have made a few other things for my dirtbike for little hand tools to make jobs easier but don't remember what they were....

I took a brass bolt and flattened one side for rolling out main bearings. Just stuck it in the oil hole and barred the engine over. Used a turn buckle placed over 2 head studs, a metal plate, and a hydraulic jack to press in cylinder liners. Needed a tool to lock up the clutch on my dirtbike, so I just stuck some solder in the teeth of counter balancer gear.

Whenever someone buys an engine for a ship, the manufactuer provides the yard with all of the special tools required to maintain the engine. A lot of times, it is just bent wrench, or has some weird handle welded on it so it can get into the tight places. It makes eninge manufacturers very angry when engineers lose special tools (often means the crew is incompetent which could lead to engine failure and when a multi-hundred million dollar engine fails, you had better believe there is going to be some failure analysis done by the manufacturer) the manufacturer will reluctantly provide the specially bent wrench for a small sum of $800-$1500 dollars. They are all very homemade looking and not of manufactured quality, either.

I have built a shop press with a bottle jack and floating press ram. It is not rigid enough. I was wondering if anyone has ever turn a bottle jack upside down using flex hose or rigid pipe to a remote pump? OLDBEAR.