I have a small but growing collection of air tools. 1/2 Impact gun, air hammer, 3/8 ratchet, and a bunch of sockets, extensions, and stuff. Mostly craftsman pro- fairly decent for the home mechanic. Over the years I've used them mainly for suspension and exhaust work. Nowadays I find myself reaching for the air ratchet often, for many jobs, even when I could use a hand ratchet. Its funny how many uses you begin to find for tools that used to seem like overkill for most jobs.

I've doing this for a while, and then suddenly, it dawned on me that jobs that used to take me two hours were now over in 20 minutes, etc. Heck, my last strut and shock job (all four) on a rusty old NY 240 took less than two hours. Removing a transmission alone? No problem- took about an hour or so.

Sometimes it feels like cheating- zip, zip, shoot down this or that, and you're done. Maintaining a couple of old cars isn't so time consuming anymore. My hands and wrists don't hurt like they used to either. Sometimes I actually miss that...

Not!