SPANNERS AND SOCKETS

Spanners and sockets are without doubt the core element of any mechanic's toolbox, whether you are working on cars for a living or as a hobby and just for fun. At first sight a feature solely on these tools might seem a little ambitious, but as you will hopefully discover, there is a whole lot more to the subject than simply 'metric or imperial.'

In fact there are tools of all shapes and sizes, reflecting the many and varied ways that access to fasteners can be obscured in a cramped engine bay, and you really can't have too many spanners. You may only need that C-spanner or the extra thin stubby 1/2in once in a blue moon, but if you have it to hand when that blue moon rises, then it can save you a world of grief in terms of lost time, damaged fixings and skinned knuckles.

Often people will find they don't have that special tool to hand, and they have to improvise instead. We are not recommending you do this, but if you are caught short on a Sunday afternoon and need the job finished so you can use the car for work on Monday, needs must... However, if you do have to make a ‘special’ tool by, for example, grinding a spanner down to gain access for a particular fastening, then keep that as a special tool and replace it in your tool box with a new and undamaged regular spanner as soon as you can. We should also sound a note of caution about other jobs that fall in a similar category, such as using a second spanner or a bar to gain extra leverage. Again this is not something we can recommend or that the tool manufacturers would condone,