Small Tools That Save Annoying Garage Jobs

Some tools do not make a job possible. They stop a normal job becoming irritating. That sounds like a small distinction until a washer drops into an engine bay and the whole afternoon changes shape.

This is the category for ugly little objects that save time by preventing the stupid part of the job.

What qualifies: it has to address a failure that recurs, cost little enough that one save pays for it, and be small enough to keep within arm's reach. Tools that merely do a job faster did not make the list — these are all tools that stop a job going wrong.

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A note on this collection: chosen from what each tool does that the alternatives cannot, not from a bench comparison here. See how we test.

Flexible magnetic pickup tool with LED

Telescoping inspection mirror

The Ullman A-2T is the named example we would point at — 6 in closed, 18-5/8 in extended, stainless, with a pocket clip, which is the difference between a tool you carry and one that stays in a drawer. It publishes no hold-angle claim, which is worth knowing before you rely on it one-handed.

Magnetic parts tray

The parts tray prevents the second-most annoying version of the dropped-fastener problem: the one where the fastener was never dropped, only put somewhere clever and immediately forgotten.

Battery terminal brush

It is not glamorous, but clean contact surfaces remove one common cause of lazy starting before the diagnostic tree gets expensive.

Nylon trim tools

The practical point is not that nylon is magic. It is that nylon is less damaging than a screwdriver when the tool slips, which is exactly when trim damage happens.

What was left out

Three things that come up and did not qualify:

• Multi-tool sets sold by piece count. The number is the selling point precisely because the individual tools are not. Half of any large set is padding.
• Inspection cameras. Genuinely useful and genuinely not small-and-cheap. They belong in a different conversation from a five-item list of things that cost almost nothing.
• Anything requiring its own charger. The point of this list is tools that work when you pick them up. A flat battery in a small tool defeats the entire premise.

Where to go next

For where these belong in a small workspace, see how to organize tools in a one-car garage, and for the drawer version of the same problem, magnetic socket organizers.

Half the value of every tool here depends on being able to see what you are doing — see rechargeable work lights for under the car.

When one of these tools is being used to chase a fastener that has vanished into the engine bay, recovering a dropped bolt works through which of the magnet, claw, mirror and borescope the job actually calls for.