The right tools for the job
Hammer:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive MC parts not far from the object you are trying to hit
Mechanics Knife:
Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on boxes containing fairings or replacement saddles.
Electric hand drill:
Normally used for spinning steel pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but also works great for drilling mounting holes in the side plastic of your GPZ, just above the brake line that goes to the front wheel.
Hacksaw:
One of a family of cutting tools that work on the ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.
Vice-grips:
Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.
Oxyacetylene torch:
Used almost entirely for lighting those stale garage cigarettes you keep hidden in the back of the whitworth socket drawer (what wife would think to look there?) because you can never remember to buy lighter fluid for the zippo lighter you got from the PX at fort campbell
Zippo lighter:
See Oxyacetylene torch
Drill press:
A tall upright machine useful for snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering against the Rolling Stones poster over the bench grinder.
Wire wheel:
Cleans the rust off old bolts, then throws them somewhere under the work bench with the speed of light. Also removes finger whorls and hard earned guitar callouses in about the time it takes to you to say ‘Django Reinhardt’.
Hydraulic floor jack:
Used for lowering a GPZ to the ground after you have installed new front fork springs, trapping the jack handle firmly between the front wheel and a brake disc.
Eight foot long Douglas fir 2 x 4:
Used for levering a Kawasaki upward off a hydraulic jack.
Tweezers:
A tool for removing wood splinter.
Phone:
Tool for calling your neighbour Chris to see if he has another hydraulic jack.
Snap-On gasket scraper:
Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise, used mainly for getting dog doo off your boot.
E-Z out bolt and stud extractor:
A tool that snaps off in bolt holes and is ten times harder than any known drill bit.
Timing light:
A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease build up on the pulsing rotor coil.
Two-ton hydraulic engine hoist:
A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of wiring and hydraulic clutch lines you may have forgotten to disconnect.
Craftsman ½ x 16 inch screwdriver:
A large wheel 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 GPZ battery to the inside of your toolbox after determining that your battery is dead as a doornail, just as you thought.
Aviation metal snips:
See hacksaw.
Trouble light:
The mechanics own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, ‘the sunshine vitamin’, which is not otherwise found in garages at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105 m/m howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the battle of the bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.
Phillips screwdriver:
Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper and tin oil-cans and splash oil on your shirt, can also be used, as the name implies, to round off Phillips screw heads.
Air compressor:
A machine that takes energy produced in a coal burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty suspension bolts last tightened 40 years ago by someone in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and rounds them off.
