The Best Tools for Fixing Cars at Home

Hey guys chrisfix here today I'm going to answer many common questions I get about tools what are good tool brands to buy what tool box should I get what are the basic tools you should have to start working on your car how can you make money buying tools and how you can get tools for free and if you already have a ton of tools remember to comment below with any tips and tricks or with something I might not cover which should help everybody out also most of my subscribers already know but for those of you who are new I am not paid by any tool companies at all everything I'm saying is completely honest as always the goal with all my videos is to help you guys learn contribute to your skillsets contribute to your knowledge base whether it's craftsman if it's sonic if it's Stanley or if it's Pittsburgh it doesn't matter what you guys take away from it and truthful and honest information matters to me and that's why you should consider hitting that subscribe button because I'm just like you guys I use common hand tools to work on my cars at home in my garage in my driveway because I enjoy working on cars and also I like to save some money and know the job is getting done right let's start with toolboxes now these are important because this is where you keep all your tools and keep them organized but you don't have to start out with one of these big boxes you could start out with something small like this this right here was my first toolbox I got this when I was a kid it was real inexpensive but it did the job when looking for your first toolbox find something with a lot of storage because you're going to be collecting a lot of tools real quickly and you don't want to move up to something like this just yet this lasted me about a year and it worked real nice after this box I moved up to this black one right here now unfortunately these are significantly more expensive but they're an investment wait for a holiday sale to buy one of these big boxes because you could find some great deals and save a ton of money also check Craigslist your local auctions sometimes you can get these filled with tools they're used but big deal you get a great deal so after this box I moved up to my sonic box this thing is fully loaded fully organized and it has a great workspace on the top you could wheel it around to your vehicle so you can bring the tools to where you're working which is helpful and I have two tips for when you're buying one of these large toolboxes the first tip is you want to get a toolbox with ball bearings in the drawers the next tip is you want a toolbox that has a bunch of drawers you don't want to have a toolbox that only has a couple you want to get as many drawers as you can so you can fit as many tools as you can and finally when you're buying your toolbox remember it's an investment it's going to last a lifetime and you want something that's going to organize your tools really well because that's the whole point of this keep your tools organized all right so you got your toolbox whether it's a small one or one of these larger ones if you're just starting out what tools do you want to get so that when you're working on your vehicle you could fix most things with a beginner's set of tools now at this point of the video let's forget about the actual brand don't worry about the brand the tool that will come later for now just focus on the tool itself the other thing is we're focusing on hand tools not stuff like a jack or one of these electric impact guns the first thing we're going to talk about is building a good socket set now unfortunately you're going to have to pick metric or SAE or buy both what I do is I'd pick one most of the cars I work on our metric so here's a metric set not one of the most important things to me are the sockets you want to make sure that you have both shallow sockets and deep sockets because you're going to find uses for both of them now this set here is a quarter inch set so we go from four all the way up to thirteen but if you can try to find a set that is at least eight here we go six it goes to fourteen fifteen all the way up to twenty-two so eight to twenty two is my recommendation if you can find a set like that so we have everything covered between these two sets here you don't want to get a set like this where it goes 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 21 because I promise you you're going to need that 18 you're going to need that 20 and this will just drive you nuts you also want to try to get a set that comes with extensions because you'll definitely need those and then a bonus is one of these universal joints which you'll probably use every once in a while for those nuts and bolts that are difficult to get to if you notice with this set we have these torques which you don't have to worry about when you're starting off unless if you have like a German car they use a lot of torques but these are more specialty and you could wait and hold off to get those till you build your collection up a little bit more and then with every socket set that you buy you need to get yourself a good breaker bar this is how you remove all those stuck nuts and bolts it'll come right off when you have all this leverage so that covers the basics on what type of socket set you want to look for next you need to get yourself a good wrench set just like with the sockets with the wrenches you want to make sure when you get a set it's a complete set there's no skips and sizes I have this cheap set here it goes six eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen seventeen nineteen so we're missing eight we're missing 16 we go down to the beginning we're missing seven you're going to need those and you're not going to have them and then you're gonna have to buy more tools so you want to try to find a complete set now there are so many types of wrenches that you could get I just want to cover the basic one that should start out with a wrench just like this has an open end has a box and medium sized not long not short but there are tons of options and here's what I mean we have specialty wrenches just like this they're angled even our basic wrench has differences you could have a 6-point like this or you could have a 12-point like that and the use is vary and then you could also get ratcheting wrenches which you don't need right away you could wait to get those they just make your life a little bit easier in tight places but they work the same as a regular wrench so again there's multiple options but I'd start off with a regular set with all the sizes that you need then as you need tools you could go and get those tools from the store and for the last category and basic hand tools I like to call these supporting tools they're your screwdrivers they're your pliers a big four pound hammer some vise grips and stuff like that when choosing pliers there's two types I like these blunt nose style pliers and then these needle nose style pliers which are a lot narrower and then you want a good clippers for cutting wires and then you could get your specialty pliers you know these are curved needle nose pliers you don't need these right away but they do help with getting hoses off hose clamps and stuff like that and then obviously screwdrivers I don't really have to explain these you got your basic Phillips head and flathead I like these because they're magnetic which is awesome because you could put the screw on there and it holds it in place or when you unscrew it won't fall into the engine bay so these are good for the basics but as you get more tools these thirds are a great way to get specialized tools that you don't need a whole set of you just need a small set and finally there's something I like to call the don't category don't buy gimmicky tools especially when you're starting out tools like this are really cool I got to give it to them they come up with these great ideas but I haven't even used this even once because I know what a regular wrench just does the job better but as many of you will find out you have like a tool addiction you see something cool like this you'll buy it so when you first start out resist the urge to buy those gimmicky tools the multi tools or even the specialized tools unless if you need them for specialized tools you don't actually have to buy them you could rent them a polar set like this go to your parts store you might only use this once twice three times a year they'll rent it out to you for free same thing for a ball joint press set like this your local parts store even rents a/c gauges and vacuum pumps so if you need to do air conditioning work you don't have to buy the pump and the gauges and there are tons of specialty tools that part stores rent out for free so check it out and save some money on tools that you might only use once a year now buying tools cost a lot of money so how do you afford them well this is how I started let's do the math every time I had something to fix on my car I got a quote from the dealer and then I priced out the job if I did it myself for example a brick job could cost $500 or more it really depends on the car I know parts are going to cost me around 100 bucks so that means I save $400 if I do the job myself now I can invest all that $400 into tools but instead let's be smart and invest only half of that into tools and save the rest for whatever you might want then as things break on your car fix it yourself save money and buy new tools and that's how I Ford my tools I mean when I was in high school and college I was working at Pizza Hut so I couldn't afford many tools but fixing my own cars and never having to go to a mechanic I saved enough and built up to what I have now now the last thing I want to talk about are tool brands now there are tons of brands and just like cars everybody has their favorite so the best way I can think about explaining the different brands is through an analogy this is how I think of the tool company's snap-on is like a Ferrari it's really nice everybody wants one it's fancy its expensive its exotic expensive its quality its expensive I think you get the idea Harbor Freight is like a Hyundai great warranty not really comparable to the Ferrari but get you from point A to point B it's usually cheap definitely low quality but you could get by with it now sonic is like a Corvette it's nice it's fast it's way less expensive compared to the Ferrari but it's more expensive than the Hyundai but you get great quality for the price and you could beat most supercars if not then you could at least keep up with them and I think a fun idea in the comments let me know your tool brand analogy and since I started using these tools you've asked me to review them so now is a good chance to see what they're all about so the first thing the thing that stands out to me the most about these tools organization you know where every tool goes every tool is organized you want flatheads they're all over here you want Phillips heads they're all over here your pry bars your specialty screwdrivers all of that is in one place neatly organized compare that to a normal toolbox where well here are all my screwdrivers I kind of keep them organized the best I can but they roll around they move you know this is one of those portable tool boxes so it moves around here I roll it around everything stays in place and I think that is just beautiful besides screwdrivers you guys already seen the socket sets but everything is numbered it's labeled it's in order it's in place and that just makes everything so much more efficient when you're working on cars you could easily find what you're looking for if I want to go get my wrenches well I got thirds here so I could grab some wrenches specialty wrenches or I have some deep sockets right there you know the next one if I want to go and grab some sae wrenches everything's right there I come down here I want to grab pliers any specialty tools a box cutter that's all in place come down here here's a chisel set some hammers and then finally my last drawer is well I just keep torque wrenches in here for now but you could put whatever you want in here it's deeper and everything in this box is neat and organized so one of the biggest things organization now compared this socket set drawer with this socket set drawer completely different I try to stay organized but you just you can't on something like this with this all foam to fit your tools and honestly this is what hooked me the next thing I want to talk about is the warranty let's say you use one of these screwdrivers as a pry bar and you break it all you have to do at Sonic completely different than any other brand tool that I've owned you take a picture of the broken tool you fill out a quick form online and once they approve the next day airship you a brand new tool to your house no waiting for a tool Trek to come no driving out to the store that I thought was pretty cool and finally let's talk about another important thing and that's the feel and function of the tools themselves just like other quality tools I've used sonic tools feel solid they have a nice rubber grip to them which is comfortable in your hands it's not hot in the summer it's not cold in the winter and the quality of the metal it's light but it feels strong a cool thing about the sockets you know after you loosen the bolt and then all of a sudden like your ratchet doesn't work anymore because it's so loose they have grips on the socket to help you remove that nut or bolt which is actually a really nice feature that's one thing that stuck out to me when I'm using these so for after owning these tools for a little while the biggest thing to me is efficiency with the organization and then the quality of the tools is great for the price a similar quality tool brand this thing is a fraction of the price of what they would charge which for people who do stuff at home but want professional series tools that's a good thing now I contacted sonic to see if I could get my subscribers a discount they did help out with the giveaway which was awesome and now they're helping that again they told me to pick out a tool for a discount for you guys so I chose these thirds and you could get 25% off when you follow the link in the description and the reason why I picked thirds is because a lot of toolboxes look like this and with the discount you could get 1/3 and get your tool box a little bit more organized and try out some new tools so hopefully the discount helps you guys it's up for a week you could click the link in the description to get to it hopefully the video is helpful gave you some new tips on getting tools no everybody's been asking for this asking for a review on sonic tools so there we go as always if you're not subscribed consider subscribing

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