If you’re a do it yourselfer there’s some things do it yourselfers mistakes and so on you don’t want to make.

First you need a fender cover and there’s different types of fender covers. Cloth is nice but it’s not very forgiving. See, if we use one of these vinyl ones such as we have over here we look at this and see that its much thicker and that means when you drop a wrench of something it doesn’t dent the fender or whatever it is under your fender cover. Alright, another thing with fender covers is you don’t want to use them as a mat to lay on because they’ll pick up dirt from the floor and then they instantly become sand paper instead of a protective device. Now another thing a lot of people do is their gonna drill a hole they don’t want to get the filings all over the floor, so they put their fender cover down, now the fender cover picks up all these things, and again you’ve got the materials that grinds into your paint.

Alright now if you have cloth fender covers they need to be washed. They need to be washed regularly to keep the dirt and grit from damaging the paint. Here we have a new product that’s designed specifically for mechanic’s washes.

Alright, now our hands you have to protect your hands. You want a good hand cleaner, but above and beyond that, one of the things we use in my shop, we all wear protective gloves. So you buy mechanic’s gloves they keep the chemicals off your hands, and keep your hands looking a lot better. Another type of glove that you should always have is something like this where you have a heavy coating… fabric on the palms and fingers that protects against cuts and so on when you’re doing exhaust system work or working with sheet metal.

Alright next, eye protection absolutely a must because it doesn’t just happen to the other guy it can happen to you. Make sure you use high quality goggles. And then it comes down to the things you wear. You never wear your watch, you never wear it around anything electrical, you never wear it around anything hot because it’ll get hot enough to burn you. Same thing with rings, rings can get crushed, rings can get conductive you can melt one on your hand if you get across an electrical circuit, jewelry of all kinds take it off. And here’s one, everyone wants to wear a great looking belt, well that’s fine when you’re on the dance floor but not so fine when you’re around the car. You never want a belt buckle when you’re working on the car. You want either a buckle-less belt or no belt at all. And if you do these things it’ll protect the car and it’ll protect you.

And if you have a question or a comment drop me a line right here at MotorWeek.