“You can never have too many tools” is a quote you hear a lot of people say. This is true IF you can keep them all organized, a tool hidden in a pile in a drawer that you can find isn’t doing anyone any good! Regardless, we decided to put a list of some handy tools and garage accessories that you might be missing for your shop. Feel free to comment below with some of your ideas!
Tag: how to
The Wrong Tools for the Job
The wrong tools for the job can cause more damage than help if you aren’t careful. When working on sheet metal a wrong swing of a hammer, the wrong hammer and dolly can cause damage to your panel that will take 3-4 times as long to fix. You ALWAYS want to match your hammer face and dolly to the shape of the panel your working on. If you’re working on a flat panel this isn’t ever a panel, but as soon as you get into a corner, a curve, or a hard-to-reach area you may need to go outside your simple starter kit of hammers and dollies.
Get Comfortable and Step Up Your TIG Game
Step up your TIG game and take your machine to the next level, enabling you to perform stronger and better looking welds. Regardless of the capabilities of the machine that you have, if you are looking to lay down the same great looking welds over and over, you have to be comfortable in your welding position. It’s good practice to take your time to get into a comfortable position and take a dry run before you start an arc. This will tell you whether your position will enable you to complete your weld from end to end without stopping and starting.
Powder Coating Motorcycle Parts to Make it Stand Out
Powder Coating is about one of the strongest coatings you can put on a part of your vehicle. What this does mean is that changing the color or design on your powdered parts can be a bit difficult to do. Recently Product Manager Beau B. decided to redo the color scheme on his motorcycle and document the process of stripping the powder off some of the parts and recoating them with fresh powder. It’s not as bad as you think!
Essential Items you Need To Start Off-Roading
With more and more companies offering parts and supplies to upgrade your vehicle and get it trail-ready, we thought we’d put together our list of necessary items you should invest in when entering the Off-Road hobby. Some of these can be used at home and on the trail as well!
Tech Tip- How to Move a Bent Edge
On my Model A project I channeled the car down over the chassis which required me to build new floor supports and pans. The way I built it all up I needed to make 6 small pans that would fit down in between each supports. This meant I had to nail the bends on either edge so the final inside measurement allowed the pans to drop down in between the supports tightly. I will have to take the pans in and out throughout the rest of the project so I wanted them to drop in and fit snug, but not so tight I needed to use a hammer to force them in (this could also bow the panel).
The Sorcery of Tuck Shrinking Sheet Metal
The simplest way to describe how metal moves or reacts when you shrink or stretch it is to imagine pizza dough. When you stretch the dough out to make a larger pie you’ll see it gets larger AND thinner as you stretch it out. If you watch the process they start with a small, thick, round piece of dough that they kneed out until the dough is the desired thickness and put the excess material on the edges for the “crust” The same if they wanted to make the pie smaller, you’d need to gather the dough together creating bunches and smooth it all together until it was the desired shape. Metal reacts almost EXACTLY the same.
What is “Hot Flocking” and When do I do it?
This helps with adhesion, but can be VERY tricky if you aren’t careful. Start by cleaning your parts as good as possible, including any paint, grease or oil. I then like to run the part through the heat and cool cycle once heating the part past the curing temperature of your powder (check your powder bottle for the temperature). I then do one last wipe down with Acetone and then put it back in the oven and heat it to the curing temperature until the ENTIRE part is reading the cure temperature. Using an IR thermometer is key here.
Where and when do I use Epoxy Primer on my project?
In the past self etching primer was the go-to coating to apply over bare metal on a car. Metal required little prep work to apply it, it flashes/drys quickly, and it came in 1K Aerosol cans for small jobs. In the past 5-10 years you’ve probably been hearing more people talk about Epoxy Primers and their use as opposed to self etching primer. We decided to give you some insight on where and when epoxy primer works best.