Sometimes, there’s not a tool on earth that fits your needs. Picks are under-appreciated life-savers, for everything from cleaning the crevices of an o-ring surface, to grabbing that one hard-to-reach electrical connector that’s hidden deep in the armpit of any modern car. Small antennas, like those found with obsolete car phones and early OnStar units, make for excellent junkyard grabs. With a little creativity, you can make a wealth of custom tools from them, including picks.
My father thought of this trick after GM began using digital cellphone networks for its in-car communications and emergency system, OnStar. When cell phone carriers eliminated analog signals, GM was required switch over to digital cellphone towers for OnStar in 2008, rendering the early hardware obsolete. Some versions were upgradable, and others were simply removed; but with a wealth of antennas laying around, and an endless list of problems to solve as a technician, he created dozens of custom picks, hooks, and other bizarre tools out of them.
Wrenchin’ Wednesday is a weekly garage-hackamajig, making wrenching great again with small tips that make working on your project easier, cheaper, and maybe even a bit faster. We’re probably not the first with any of these ideas, but you won’t be the last to know every Wednesday!
The other week, we talked about how fix a loose woobly-extension with duck tape and heat shrink!
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