A Guide to Mustang Tools

 (and their "proper" usage....!!)

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive or unavailable parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your door; works particularly well on boxes containing imported rubber parts. Also used to cut rubber hoses 1/2 inch too short.

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Handy for spinning steel pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but it also works great for drilling mounting holes in panels just where the brake line passes behind to the rear wheels.

PLIERS: Used to try to turn anything that you haven’t bought the special tool for.

HACKSAW: Pretends to be a metal cutting tool, but actually designed to turn perfectly good cutting blades into piles of broken pieces.

VICE-GRIPS: Used to round off bolt heads, and to pinch out small pieces of skin from the palm of your hand.  Also useful for transferring intense welding heat to your fingers.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for setting various flammable objects in your garage on fire.  Also handy for igniting the grease inside a brake drum as you're trying to melt it out.

METRIC SOCKETS: Designed to impersonate that 9/16" or 1/2" socket you've been searching for the last 15 minutes, but either to big or to small to fit any Mustang bolt properly.

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching a flat metal bar out of your hand so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted part you were drying.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans rust off old bolts, then throws them into the garbage under the workbench at the speed of light, never to be seen again.  Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say, "Ouc...."

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering a car to the floor after you have installed your new front disk brake set-up, trapping the jack handle firmly under the front spoiler.

PHONE: For calling your neighbour to see if he has that tool that you’ve been meaning to buy for the last 20 years.

SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a tool for badly scratching soft alloy sealing faces, but used mainly for getting dog-doo off your boot.

E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool for snapping off in bolt holes, that is ten times harder than any known drill bit.

TIMING LIGHT: A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease build up.

TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST: A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps, fuel lines, or choke and throttle cables you forgot to disconnect.

STANLEY 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end without the handle.

BATTERY ELECTROLYTE TESTER: A handy tool for transferring sulphuric acid from a car battery to the inside of your tool box after determining that your battery is dead as a door nail, just as you thought.

METAL SNIPS: Used to prove the crushing strength of your handgrip is inadequate.

MECHANICS LIGHT:   Sometimes called a drop light, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at the rate of 105-mm howitzer shells in first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge.  More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER:  Used to round off Phillips screw heads, and double as oil filter removal wrench by stabbing through stubborn oil filters.

AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in power plant 1000 kms away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last tightened 35 years ago by someone in the USA, and either rounds the nut or shears the bolt off.

PRYBAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace that 50 cent part.

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