13. Snap-On and Blue Point both have magnetic can/bottle holders that will stick to your toolbox and hold a can of WD-40 or PB Blaster at the ready. Or, use it on the dash or door panel of your beater old truck to give you a place to hold your drink. Pop it off at a show and your old interior looks stock.
14. A 12-point socket will fit onto the square shaft of a tap so you can chase threads easier than with the T-handle.
15. Lay a large piece of cardboard, or better yet, carpet, underneath your truck if you're working under the hood. Any dropped tools or parts can be retrieved by sliding the cardboard or carpet out, rather than climbing underneath. Carpet will also help keep those dropped parts from rolling away.
16. Carry a spare serpentine belt! This is especially important if your truck has an aftermarket supercharger with an odd-sized belt and it decides to spit three of the eight ribs, wrapping them around the harmonic balancer so badly that you have to cut them off with your pocketknife. It's much cheaper than a tow. Guess how we know about this one?
Two ways to spot where a misfire is happening:
17. Use a spray bottle to wet the exhaust manifold near each exhaust port. The firing cylinders will quickly vaporize the water.
18. Clip a timing light to the spark plug wire to help diagnose if the problem is a bad wire or distributor terminal. The dead plug wire won't fire the timing light.
19. New trucks don't have long plug wires, but if your older truck has a misfire coming from the plug wire arcing to a short, you can find it quickly by just turning off the lights in the garage and running the engine in the dark, making the arc easy to spot.
20. Use anti-seize compound on all of your stainless steel fasteners and any time different types of metal are threaded together, like spark plugs into aluminum heads.
21. It sounds wrong, but if you first tighten a bolt or lug nut slightly it can break the rusty bonds that hold it in place.
22. If you've got a bolt that won't come loose, heat the exposed part with a torch and then touch a wax candle to the threads. The thermal shock of heating and cooling should break the rusty bond and draw the wax in to lubricate the threads.
23. If the fastener happens to be a Phillips screwdriver, a dab of valve grinding compound will help the bit grip the recess.
24. Even if you don't have access to air tools, an impact driver can break tough screws loose. They turn the impact from a hammer into twisting force and sell for less than $25.
25. Use the Phillips recess to center a left-handed drill bit and drill progressively larger holes until all that's left are the threads. Often, just the action of drilling the bolt will cause it to break free and back out.