#Tools-Equipment

Health and safety aren’t things you want to skimp out on, so having a well-stocked first aid kit in your car should be something you’re willing to spend on.

There’s a real good chance the light incorporated with your garage door opener isn’t extremely bright. It’s there for safety reasons and to give adequate lighting for your garage, but if you’re doing any serious work on your vehicle, you’ll want better lighting. That’s why garage work lights exist, and there’s a variety of types and options available on the market. Today, those products benefit from LED lighting technology, which means more efficient lighting with lower power consumption and heat.

These days, modern cars are packed with safety features and technologies intended to make our driving experience as safe as possible. Unfortunately, accidents do happen and you’ll never know when you may get in a situation where you’re stuck inside your car. It may take some time for emergency services to arrive, and anytime you’re involved in a collision, every second counts.

There’s a good chance you’ve come across or heard an impact wrench when visiting an automotive repair shop or dealership. They aren’t necessarily tools made for professionals and if you plan on doing routine work on your car, investing in an impact wrench is wise. Like other power tools, an impact wrench is designed to make your life and job a lot easier— especially challenging tasks like removing rusted-on lug nuts. More importantly, there is now a wide range of offerings from various manufacturers, including cordless impact wrenches that use batteries so you don’t have to invest in an air compressor.

Few things make at-home car-repair or garage activities more unpleasant than a freezing cold workspace—and that’s just why sales of garage heaters really heat up at this time of year (pun very much intended).

Owning a set of jumper cables is almost a necessity for every vehicle owner. It’s an important component to a car emergency kit as you’ll never know when you can get stuck with a dead battery. Having quick and easy access to a reliable set of jumper cables could save you or someone else from being stranded for hours.

If you’re working on your car or have it parked on an incline, the last thing you need is for it to roll away. Even if placed in park with the engine off and the parking brake engaged, there’s still a risk that it might roll away, and that has the potential to seriously injure someone and/or cause damage to its surroundings.

An important part of car maintenance is getting under your vehicle and working on those oily bits, but sometimes it’s not that easy to do exactly that. Squirming under a car or squatting by a wheel can be harmful on your body, not to mention unhygienic. Fortunately, some smart inventor created the creeper seat, which is also known as the mechanic seat.

One often overlooked aspect of your garage is the floor. You may have the fanciest garage around with the best tools, great wall art and a couple of nice cars parked in it, but a ratty bare concrete floor can bring the look of the entire room down. An easy way to remedy this is with paint, but paint can chip, crack, peel or bubble, so you want to make sure you opt for the right product before applying it.

Photo credit: Vlad Linev / Shutterstock.com

There are dozens of reasons you may need to lift the front or rear of your vehicle off of the ground for clearance to work beneath it—and whether you’re doing an oil change, an inspection, or changing or servicing some part beneath, car ramps are the go-to means to do it  for many applications.

Portable generators have multiple uses but are common among RV owners and vehicle owners who often go camping, take long trips, or go tailgating. There are plenty of options available, spanning price ranges from extremely affordable to extremely expensive. So how do you choose the right portable generator?

Your car can be a great resource on a camping trip. Camping next to your car reduces the amount of hiking needed to get to your campgrounds and is a great way to enjoy the outdoors without complicated pre-planning. Having your car as a power source also allows you to have more amenities while camping and allows you to bring more equipment.

It’s not always easy to get there, but when you reach the point of being able to build out your garage there’s a lot to consider. How much DIY are you looking to do, how much space do you have, and what’s your budget? These are the core questions, and the former will quickly be guided by the two latter criteria. Even if budget and space are slightly limited there’s a lot that can be done, providing us the perfect opportunity to round out this list of some of our favorite tools and equipment to properly kit out your home garage.

As you dig deeper and deeper into automotive DIY you quickly realize why a professional mechanic’s tool set is as extensive as it is. You can get by with the basics, but if you want to be efficient (and not cursing every automotive engineer on the planet) there are a lot of handy tools out there that make life easier without breaking the bank.