MARTINSR's Basics of Basics" - tool buying.

[jamis]

Good advice for the shop mechanics, but if any of you out there are heavy equipment mechanics you know what it felt like when you dropped a $30 snapon wrench into the bottom of a Cat D9 and you had to spend the next 3 hours dropping and then reinstalling a belly pan just to get your wrench back.......no thanks....I now buy the cheap stuff by the dozen and when it disappears to the bottom of some bulldozer I just laugh and walk away to grab another. Now that cheap junk will have to wait till I have to work on the bottom end one day to be recovered. All my Mack and Snapon stuff stays in the shop! And sometimes you have to take a tool and heat it, bend it, cut it, shape it to do a one time job, that’s another time you like to have a bunch of the cheap stuff around to play with.
What makes you a qualified mechanic is what’s in your head not in your toolbox.....