G'day folks,

Here are a couple of useful gadgets I've made up over the years!

1. Parts washing trough

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This was made from an old home heating oil tank, using the original legs cut shorter. By cutting the tank on a slant [using a jigsaw with metal cutting blade], it has a built in 'splashback'. I actually got 2 troughs this size from that tank, and the hinged lid that's on this one too.

The drain is via a ball valve, screwed into the original threaded outlet fitting. I drain the dirty fluid into a homemade 'filter funnel'; just a cheapo paper vacuum cleaner bag liner, in a 2L plastic bottle with the bottom cut off. That filters the dirt out, and the clean fluid just goes back into the 20L tap drum visible in the pic.

As a bonus, the tank had about 50L of oil left in it when I scrounged it, and I had an Andersen industrial steam cleaner which used heating oil!

2. Aspirator Bottle

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This one was inspired by a common item found in chemical laboratories. It has a lot of uses: extracting old fuel from OPE tanks as in the pic; vacuum bleeding vehicle brakes; sucking out old brake fluid from master cylinder reservoirs, are just a few of them...

Pick a thick-walled glass jar for this, so that it will withstand vacuum without imploding.

Cheers,
Gadge

"ODK Mods can explain it to you, but they can't understand it for you..."

"Crazy can be medicated, ignorance can be educated - but there is no cure for stupid..."