Hot Rod Restoration: Tools for Car Assessment

Video Transcript

"Hi, I am Joel Jones, I own Jonesy's Inc., a company that specializes in auto-restoration and customization. Today we are going to be talking about the tools that you are going to need to assess the condition of your restoration or hot rod project. The first thing we are going to talk about is safety. You have to have a pair of gloves with when you go to inspect these vehicles to protect your hands. Safety glasses are also a must, things are going to be falling your eyes when you are crawling around looking at every single nook and cranny that you possibly can see on the vehicle. Coveralls are a good thing to also have, so that you can protect your clothes, a pad of paper and clipboard so that you take notes on what you see, specific parts that you are going to need to purchase, the extent of rust repair and so on. A digital camera helps you in the long run because it provides you baseline to review when you get back home, you can use these pictures to spark your memory when you are creating a project list to work from. An inspection mirror, this is one that a lot of people forget because they do not quite think about it, they think that there are going to be able to crawl around underneath a vehicle and see everything, but when you are really down in there you often times need an inspection mirror to see VIN plates, data name plates, casting numbers and so forth. Following that up is a light, a good flexible light that is bright is indispensable. Some kind of solvent cleaner is also a really , really good thing that you are going to want to have. There is forty, fifty years of grease and grime on these vehicles and a lot of times in order to determine whether or not you have an original part or replacement part, you need to inspect the VIN number and then write it down. So that you can determine whether or not it is actually factory or it has been replaced. Rags, obvious choice, you are going to need rags, everything is dirty, you need to clean yourself up. The next thing we are going to need is going to be a pocket knife, you can use this to scrape paint away, dig at rust, determine how much bondo there is. The other way to determine how much bondo is to have a magnet, you can walk around the vehicle and use the magnet to determine whether or not there is too much paint, bare steel or extensive bondo. A screwdriver also, you do not really want to use your pocketknife to be digging hard at rust to determine how far or how extensive the rust is so a good screwdriver is required. You want to be careful if this is not your vehicle, you do not want to go and be digging at somebody else's vehicle to make the rust look worse than it really is, so use caution when you are digging around a vehicle that is not yours. Finally, a battery pack to test the electrical system is optional, a lot of these vehicles have been sitting in barns for years and years and years and their electrical system is completely dead, so energizing the electrical system can be something that can really help you determine the extent of damage of the vehicle."