Tips for the unpopular mechanic

[Tex Gore]

Hey folks - that's right, I have no friends. This brings with it both advantages and disadvantages - a round is cheaper, and I can do the crossword in peace. I'll think of some disadvantages later probably.

Anyway, does anyone have any tricks for those nuts and bolts where you can only get to one side at one time? Where you try and precariously balance a spanner on the bolt, then just as you get underneath to the nut a renegade gust of wind/neighbour/basset hits the car and the spanner falls off. And so it goes on.

If anyone has a trick for such fasteners when you have no choice other than to work alone (no advice on making friends please - nobody wants that in the world I assure you, I'm an awful human being) then I'd appreciate it.

TIA

TG

[Dave.]

Find another lonely, miserable, grumpy wker who's in the same predicament, solely for the holding the other end of each others spanner.

Where about are you, I may be able to help...

[phillpot]

Mole grips are your friend.

[Tex Gore]

Dave. said:

Find another lonely, miserable, grumpy wker who's in the same predicament, solely for the holding the other end of each others spanner.

Where about are you, I may be able to help...

Lonely and miserable I consider badges, feel the other might be slightly judgy BUT I guess I appreciate the overall sentiment?!

I'm in Hook, Hampshire. Land of tax and misery.

[Dave.]

Tex Gore said:

Lonely and miserable I consider badges, feel the other might be slightly judgy BUT I guess I appreciate the overall sentiment?!

I'm in Hook, Hampshire. Land of tax and misery.

Looks like you need some molegrips then....

[OnTheEdge]

phillpot said:

Mole grips are your friend.

I've heard his mole grips tolerate him, but there is no deeper relationship

If you need to get a spanner or socket firmly wedged onto a fastener, wrap a small piece of electrical tape around the fastener head. You can even use a scrap of paper or food wrapper if nothing else is to hand.

[Tex Gore]

I can come to a paid arrangement with molegrips - don't know why I didn't think of that before really. Although in my horror of an old Landy, such bolts are bound to be incompatible in location terms aren't they.

[Dave.]

Nah, you need imperial molegrips, not metric....

[E-bmw]

Oh, and make sure they are left handed if you are using your right hand on the other end.

[Novexx]

Just weld the spanner on - Job done & no Basset will get it of.

As suggested, bit of paper / tower / thin card between nut & jaws.

[Mikey G]

Duck tape, not sure on who to hold the spanner though.

[Tex Gore]

Dave. said:

Nah, you need imperial molegrips, not metric....

I wonder when Miles Jupp will go metric....

[ChampionRabbit]

I find l-shape wrenches to be the best jammable spanner type for this sort of thing as they grip nuts very will, and being significantly hollow (not usually entirely) you can often ram a bar up the unused end to anchor it.

They are strangely not common in the UK, but I swear by them. Apparently in France they are standard issue for motor mechs...

I'm never sure what the best name for them is; I always knew them as 'pipe spanners' but apparently not...

[Arnold Cunningham]

It's pretty rare that I need someone to hold a spanner for me, including doing some pretty big jobs over the years. In the odd case I do, it's also very rare I need mole grips. Just a bit of judicious positioning to lock a ring spanner on in the right spot usually does the job.
Regards
Another friendless landrover (and others) owner in northeast Hampshire.

[Cankicker]

Over the years, of all the fancy tools I've owned for this & that, the one that's got me out of jail more times than anything else is the old fashioned, ten quid impact driver. Can't beat it for effectiveness & I wouldn't be without it.

[Gojira]

Cankicker said:

Over the years, of all the fancy tools I've owned for this & that, the one that's got me out of jail more times than anything else is the old fashioned, ten quid impact driver. Can't beat it for effectiveness & I wouldn't be without it.

A word of advice - don't leave your thumb on the end when you hit the driver with the hammer....

Guess how I know!

[richard sails]

When its a case of just getting the threads to engage I have used bluetac before now with sucess. Once engaged, mole grips or a spanner etc jammed in place.

[Hercule Holmes]

I don't think anything can replace having someone knowledgeable to be there and show you how to do a job right or to show you what you're doing wrong. If there is one thing I've learned about DIY car jobs, it's that there are 999 wrong ways to do a job and only 1 way to do it correctly.

There is so much stuff that you need to know, and really easy jobs can become a nightmare if you're not clued-up. For the experts it's like "well of course you shouldn't put copper grease on that" or "why are you trying to do that without a ball-joint separator?" followed later by "that's the wrong kind of ball-joint separator.."

[Arnold Cunningham]

Yeah, but he just wants someone to hold his big spanner so it doesn't fall off.

[Xcore]

If you really get stuck pm me as I’m only down the road!