If you’re into do it yourself there’s some things that you should have in your garage. Number one is a first aid kit. Number two is a fire extinguisher. These are mandatory.

Now other things that you need to be aware of. There are hidden dangers in all sorts of places in a garage. Number one, air hoses. They deteriorate with age. And depending on the pressure in the line and so on – they can be dangerous. So be sure you have good quality, good condition in your air hose.

Blow guns like this where you use to blow dirt away and so on, you have to make sure that they are the new style. That they have the vents on the side of them. That is to prevent injecting air under the skin. Eyes? You always want to have eye protection no matter what you’re doing. So, you have to have good eye protection.

Something that either fits over your existing eyewear. Or if you don’t wear glasses, something like we have here. Gloves. We use tons of gloves in the repair shops these days. Primarily like we see here. The rubber type. And we buy them by the case. But we also have gloves for specialty operations.

Ones for heat, ones for sharp things and so on. So, good gloves. Now the tools. Here we have an assortment of hammers as an example. The material that’s used to make these heads on the hammers are different. Therefore, depending on what you’re going to be doing with the hammer, you want the appropriate hammer. Whether it be doing a punch or to be straightening metal or whatever it is that you’re doing to avoid shattering a hammer or getting his with shrapnel from chips from a hammer.

So make sure you use the right tools. Alright, you may have to lift a car. One really good way to do that is if you have a good set of ramps. Make sure they are good. Or you could have a floor jack. Make sure you open the owner’s manual to find out where to jack the car up using the floor jack and never get under the car just on the jack. Always let it down onto jack stands.

And remember that jack stands, if you have black top or dirt or anything like that they’ll settle right into it and the car could come down on you. So if it’s a soft surface use a thick piece of plywood. Always chock the wheels using wood or rubber or metal. Some cars have wheel chocks right in the trunk.

Here’s something you never do and that is you never put any part of your body under the car when it’s up on one of these factory jacks that’s in the trunk. Those things are an accident looking for a place to happen.

Finally, here we have a bottle jack. They are very versatile. You can do many lots of things with them. But look at the size of the top of it. That top is small and it concentrates the force so unless you use it properly, you can punch a hole through the underneath of the car. Not nice. Be safe.

And if you have a question or a comment, drop me a line – right here at Motorweek.