{"id":3696,"date":"2012-08-05T02:04:25","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T09:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/?p=3696"},"modified":"2015-05-26T16:41:16","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T23:41:16","slug":"where-dreams-are-built","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/2012\/08\/where-dreams-are-built\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Dreams are Built"},"content":{"rendered":"

I turned my first bolts on a car when I was an over zealous, pimple-faced High School kid – many eons ago. As an up-and-coming amateur mechanic, I learned by doing and trial & error. I was not blessed with state of the art equipment nor facilities. I remember making use of whatever I could from random tools lying around the house and a cheap Husky socket set. When I was tinkering with my first car, I lived in a townhouse and then later moved into an archaic rented house with a cramped garage. Less than ideal, but we all have to start somewhere.<\/p>\n

Slowly, as I began to delve deeper and deeper into the car world, I amassed my collection of tools. I was eventually able to obtain a level of quality and cohesion in my garage set up to allow for comfortable workflow. A far cry from my humble beginnings, but nothing impressive or out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n

Which is why I decided to step it up a notch this time around. Prior to the moving date, I filtered through my inventory of tools and threw away the junk while adding in some upgrades. With the star of the new additions being the pair of Snap-on Dual80 ratchets. The longer one with the comfort handle is a locking flex-head type. Both ratchets are 3\/8″ drive, which I feel is the most useful size; it’s strong enough to handle high torque and small enough to be versatile. You shouldn’t need 1\/2″ until you’re in the 20mm+ range, in my opinion. I can’t wait to put them to work, the Dual80 mechanism offers an incredible degree of ratchet arc… it makes standard ratchets seem sloppy.<\/p>\n

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Although the generic, overhauled<\/a> Craftsman ratchet (left) has been my bread-and-butter tool for a few years, it will now serve as my backup. I’ll use it whenever I do not feel like abusing one of the Snap-ons and need more leverage by sleeving on a jack handle.<\/p>\n

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It took me a solid weekend just to unpack everything, after the epoxy flooring<\/a> was finally done and ready. During the same time, I assembled my new Craftsman Professional 5ft workbench. Along with the pegboard attachment, the workbench is the centerpiece of the garage.<\/p>\n

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I love it, all my frequently used tools are easily accessible and having a tabletop is a great improvement. Before, whenever I needed to work on a smaller part, I usually did it on the concrete floor. I also mounted on a vice (wish I had this a long time ago).<\/p>\n

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The house came with nice, metal shelves installed in the garage, but I still needed a closable cabinet. I went with a more conservative approach here and picked up an el-cheapo Walmart special. It may be plastic, but functions more than adequately to hold all my cleaners and other liquids.<\/p>\n

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I know that my garage may be relatively modest and can’t compare to high-dollar setups with custom cabinetry and so forth, but what I have now is a world apart from what I’ve been used to. It is organized to my liking and is well stocked with the necessary essentials; these are most crucial to promote workflow. I shudder at images of dirty garages with tools strewn everywhere and parts stored haphazardly.<\/p>\n

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In true fanboy fashion, I have the Mazda banner hanging high. Ultimately, the principal motive behind my investment into this garage is all for the RX-7. In the interim, the Fiat is residing in this space under false pretenses, whereupon it will be swiftly banished once the King returns home to its rightful throne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I turned my first bolts on a car when I was an over zealous, pimple-faced High School kid – many eons ago. As an up-and-coming amateur mechanic, I learned by doing and trial & error. I was not blessed with state of the art equipment nor facilities. I remember making use of whatever I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3696"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5583,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3696\/revisions\/5583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grandmighty.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}