Redneck Garage Tips & Tricks

Hey Y’all. A lot of folks here in SoCal make fun of me for the Hillbilly engineering that I come up with or have learned over the years. I take all the ribbing as good clean fun, but I do notice that when these same folks need expertise with a difficult maintenance issue… they come to me. That fact is not lost on this good ole boy. So, I figure that everyone is entitled to my brand of redneck wrenchin’ tricks and in honor of the 4th of July, I offer these tidbits:

1. Use bullet casings to cut bolt holes in gaskets. Yeah, that’s right. If your gasket has bolt holes too small from the factory, or you are cutting your own gaskets, you can use old bullet casings to cut holes in the gasket material. 22 cal shells make good cutters for small holes and a 44 caliber will make a big hole. Next time you go shootin’, hang on to a couple of the shell casings.

Walking in the desert you can find a lot of used shell casings

2. Running alcohol based fuel or get water in your gas, and your components build up a collection of alkali or corrosion on the cast parts? This type of alkali is resistant to carb cleaners. This is another one of those racer hand me down tricks: use toilet bowl cleaner as a presoak then clean it with carb cleaner. Works like a champ and leaves your carb bowls tidy fresh.

3. Yet another old racer’s trick: Ever buy a part and the gasket that comes with it has been bent or creased? Get the old lady’s iron out, use high heat and plenty of steam and iron it like you would a shirt. Or you could send them to a Chinese laundry and ask for light starch.

Last time I ironed anything

4. Everybody has their own recipe for loosening frozen bolts. I’ll share with you mine: PB Blaster. This is the greatest stuff on the planet for freeing up frozen bolts. They even have a great motto: Don’t bust your knuckles, bust your nuts.

Super Secret Nut buster

5. Using wet/dry sandpaper. If you are planning on wet sanding, you will want to soak your sandpaper for a few hours before use. They work better once they have been saturated with water. You’ll know when they are ready to use, they will sink. If you have “floaters”, they need to soak a little longer.

We hope these tips help and we are interested in any other home remedies that our readers have come across over the years and are willing to share. Nothing is too redneck for us, just reply to this post and leave your redneck garage tips here.

Happy Fourth of July Americans.

About the author

Bobby Kimbrough

Bobby grew up in the heart of Illinois, becoming an avid dirt track race fan which has developed into a life long passion. Taking a break from the Midwest dirt tracks to fight evil doers in the world, he completed a full 21 year career in the Marine Corps.
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