5 garage essentials to make your tinkering life so much easier
Treat yourself to some life-changing garage kit this winter
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Life as a petrolhead can sometimes be a bit dismal during the dark winter months. There's a good chance your favourite car doesn't play nicely with salted roads that seem perpetually covered in brown goo. This means it's the perfect time to stay inside tinkering and fettling your pride and joy ready for the year ahead.
With that in mind, we think it's about time you treated yourself to some life-changing (perhaps) bits of garage equipment. Here are five of our favourite garage essentials that will make your tinkering life a little bit easier.
Portable jump pack and air compressor
It sort of looks like a happy alien
The marketing tagline for this compressor should be "if it's gone flat I can fix it". That's because this portable 12-volt pack can not only jump-start cars with flat batteries, it can also make short work of flat tyres thanks to a built-in air compressor. It also has a work light so you can drag it under cars to illuminate those stupid stuck effing nuts. Speaking of which…
PLUSGAS… AS MUCH PLUSGAS AS YOU CAN AFFORD
PlusGas is a bit like a cult. Once you've experienced its ability to unseize stuck nuts (steady on) and bolts you'll wonder how you ever lived without it before. And you'll want to buy at least a twinpack of the stuff, because it works best when you soak troublesome bolts in it, then leave them overnight. Chances are that come the morning it'll have done the job, leaving you to undo whatever was stuck with a smug grin on your face. We love PlusGas, and you can never have enough of it. Long Live PlusGas!
Introducing the King of oil funnels
That blue thing in the photo isn't just a bit of your mum's leftover Tupperware – it's the Sealey oil funnel. It's a large, rigid and rectangular thing, which means you can upend a bottle of oil into it and leave it draining into your engine. There's far less chance of spillage than trying to use a regular flexible round funnel, and it's uh, blue. It's boring, but it'll improve your life.
Big Wipes – the best hand cleaners we've tried
Unless you've a weird fetish, there's no worse feeling than finishing a day working on your car only to find your latex gloves have split and your hands now look like you've given Darth Vader a wet massage with a mix of coal dust and snot. The traditional cleaning method is to use a pot of Swarfega and remove most of your skin, but we prefer these Big Wipes. We discovered them while redecorating our lounge, 'cos they're originally designed to remove to remove paint from your hands. These heavy duty ones should cut through car grease with no problem though, and they smell nice too.
A one-tonne engine hoist (obviously)
Technically this is a portable gantry crane, but once you've had one of these Sealey hoists you'll wonder how you ever coped without one. It's surprisingly lightweight, easy to move thanks to smooth-running and lockable wheels and can safely lift an entire tonne – perfect for deep engine maintenance or just holding any tricky bits and pieces. Delicious.
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