Grease those new carb gaskets too!

Old speakers are always worth scooping up for the big magnets.

Plus one on the golf tees. I also use needlenose Vise-Grips w/ fuel line over the jaws for pinching off rubber line.

Put some fine sand on that Dawn- scrubbariffic!

Maxi-Pads are great to pre-emptively stop up leaks from auto-trans tails- duct-tape ‘em on.

Dollar Store furniture polish spray.

Yeah, that’s the unit. The head that contains the bit can be removed from the tool and stuck onto a 3/8" air impact. Out, damned fastener!

Rusty fasteners? Junkyard brake drums covered in oxide? Don’t fart around with a wire brush- do this:

If you are planning some welding, never, NEVER clean the parts beforehand with brake cleaner containing tetrachlorethylene- at around 600 degrees Fahrenheit this stuff turns into Phosgene gas, and that will make you dead quickly or ruin the remainder of your life.

New pistons/pins? Provided they are not the press-in type, put the pins in the freezer the night before, then heat the pistons in the oven. Hit the pins with moly lube and they will slide right in, no fuss or struggle.

Got a block or heads to degrease before you bring it to the machine shop? Don’t fuss with Purple Power, Castrol Super-Clean, etc.- go down to the Dollar Store and buy a few cans of generic oven cleaner. Sodium hydroxide is like hot-tank-in-a-can.

To keep the cut-offs from safety wire from getting loose and possibly falling into somewhere you do not wish to have them fall, do this with your safety-wire pliers:

Doing valvetrain work? Many ice-cube trays have 16 spaces- perfect for keeping your lifters in order. Mark the tray with an arrow for ‘front’ and you’re in business.

Very nice for holding stuff together for soldering as well.

Also, nut drivers are far nicer to use on worm-screw hose clamps than fumbling with a flat-blade screwdriver.

Right0- if you do not have time to do the job properly, how are you going to find time to do it over?

Got a body panel to butt-weld? Try a handful of old hard-drive magnets to keep everything in perfect alignment. I find them much easier to use than panel clamps or the big dumb red triangular welding magnets.

On the subject of brakes, silicone grease is your best friend when it comes to rebuilding brake cylinders. I’ve run into very few cylinders that could not be rebuilt vs. shelling out for new ones, and new rare/obscure cylinders can be tough to locate.

...and try not to wear rings when working around juice- they can get red-hot very quickly when they touch current.

On certain vehicles door hinges are fastened with large Phillips-head screws- old VWs for instance. For those screws, and other large Phillips fasteners on motorcycles, the best way to avoid destroying the heads while attempting to loosen ‘em is a dollop of valve-grinding compound on the screwdriver tip. One can apply…