You could be the most skilled mechanic in the world, but you wouldn’t be able to set up a thriving garage or workshop without the necessary tools and equipment. Choosing the correct equipment when setting up your own garage business is crucial.
If budgeting is an issue then you will want to select fewer pieces of high quality equipment over lots of mediocre tools. This may mean that you have to turn down some more obscure jobs until you have the revenue to invest in new equipment, but the more common jobs that you do carry out will be done to a much better standard and customers will leave recommending you to their friends.
Hoists
So much of your vital repair work will be done when vehicles are in a raised position. Regardless of what type of mechanic you want to be, what sort of vehicles you will be attending to or which jobs you will take on, you are likely to need to use your hoists on a daily basis, so it is worth investing in some quality ones. Although high-end hoists can seem like a costly purchase, average-priced hoists tend to give up after two years, so you will save yourself money in the long run by buying good ones to begin with.
Consider buying a clear floor hoist. This will give you the best access to the parts of the car you need to work on, as there will be nothing in between the two sides restricting your path. It will also allow you to move other heavy equipment around the workshop much more easily, without knocking things over or having to go the long way round.
Spanners
It would be much easier if nuts and bolts were standardised, and every car manufacturer used the same gauge in every car. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There are a huge number of different sized bolts which are frequently used inside cars and this means that they require a huge number of different spanners to remove them. Don’t fall into the trap of only buying a few spanners to save money, as inevitably this will leave you without the few that you end needing in the first few jobs.
Auto Scanner
This is a really useful piece of equipment which will save you loads of time as a mechanic. It will provide you with live data about the diagnostics of a vehicle, which will help you enormously when you are trying to work out what is wrong and to correct any issues. You can’t set up your own garage without getting one of these.
Tyre Changer
The big jobs may be more interesting, but it is the small jobs which will keep you afloat once you’ve opened your own workshop. You will change many a tyre for your clients and relying on your own strength alone to get a tyre off the wheel will probably leave you feeling frustrated and exhausted. The sheer number of tyres that you will be asked to change will make it well worth investing in a tyre changer to make the job less labour intensive and much faster.
Tool Box
Once you’ve purchased all of the equipment that you think you’ll need in your new garage, don’t forget that you’ll need a place to put it all! Storage for your tools is just as important as the tools themselves. Having pieces of equipment lying all over the workshop will be a health and safety hazard for you and your employees, but it will also give the impression of disorganisation to your customers. Invest in a quality tool box to keep your equipment safe and out of the way. This way you will be less likely to lose important tools, cause an accident or give off the wrong impression to your clients.
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