Products

Scattered amongst all the commerce posts you’ve read on this and other sites about ZOMG PRIME DAY DEALS featuring a wide array of products are lists like this one, focused on a single type of car part that you’re not likely to think about until its actually needed.

If you followed our advice about socket sets and garage door openers, you’re well on your way to dabbling in a bit of automotive DIY. A good place to start? The simple oil change. Since oil is the lifeblood of your car, it’s an excellent idea to understand why it’s important to change it regularly.

Most dealerships will, as a rule, install a bed liner of some sort in the back of every single new pickup they park on the lot. Whether one agrees with this propping up of the parts department usually depends on which side of the financial ledger one resides.

Heading out into the sand — or any off-road environment — is bound to bring a fun-filled day with the chance of scattered calamity. The old saw advises that if you didn’t get stuck during your sojourn to the desert or mud pit, you weren’t trying hard enough.

If the garage floor coverings we profiled the other day are aspirational, then these in-house car lifts represent the culmination of most gearheads’ dreams. Whether you’re in the market for one of these things in order to increase the amount of storage in your garage or you’re actually going to use it for repair duties, a lift is the gold standard to which most of us with gasoline in our veins aspire. Lifting that chrome-bedecked collector car skyward to perform a repair or carry out an inspection is something that fills the dreams of most car nuts.

There’s solid evidence in the comment section of this august publication that we (the collective we, which includes readers and authors) have held the keys to a horrible car or two at some point in their automotive career. A quick headcount in the official TTAC Slack chat reveals humans with a propensity to own decrepit Miata convertibles and Lincoln coupes alike.

Cinder blocks, welded-together steel wheels, janky-looking lengths of board – most of us know we’re not supposed to rest the weight of a car or truck on anything other than a pair of stout jack stands. Whether or not we actually do this is better left unsaid.

Continuing the recent trend of DIY tools, we’ve selected spark plug sockets as today’s list of choices. While not all of us set gaps and fiddle with old fashioned points systems, there’s a solid chance most of our readers have had cause to throw a new set of plugs in their beater at some point or another.

It should be no surprise to anyone reading this post that pickup trucks are popular in this country, to put it mildly. Such is the market for these machines that manufacturers are ladling more and more luxury items on them, searching for the upper limit of opulence and price. By all accounts, they haven’t found the ceiling yet. Silverado, Ram, F-150 … nearly 1 in 5 items to roll off a dealer’s lot with a new-car smell has an open box attached to it.

It is freely admitted a bit of help was enlisted for this post. After all, your author does not generally purchase items for his daily driver that intentionally make it less comfortable, except for the U-Cheap-OutTM suspension kit he once purchased (best to gloss over that one).

This post will be prefaced with two huge caveats. First, your author has exactly a single experience with this type of tool, meaning the recommendations contained within this article are drawn upon that brief encounter, opinions of others who have more experience, and consultations with a battered Ouija board.

Routinely ignored until needed and often derided until put into good use, seat covers are the Rodney Dangerfield of car accessories. Poor fitting units bear the brunt of buyer’s remorse, while a wanton color choice is obvious to all passersby. After all, seats take up most of your car’s interior – their covering is kinda noticeable.

Let’s get one thing clear from the start – you shouldn’t skimp on brake products. They are, after all, one of the only things on your car between it and a nasty crash.

There are some things best enjoyed without filters – Instagram photos, discussions about pay with your boss, and those Camel cigarettes from the ’80s. What definitely does require a filter is the oiling system on your car’s engine. We’ve gathered a few of them here.

For a good many gearheads, washing their car is a form of relaxation, if not outright therapy. From the initial hosing off of loose dirt to the final wipe of a chamois, taking one’s ride from dirty to clean hardly a chore for most people reading this post.