Dropped $340 on a smoke machine for finding intake leaks, best money I ever lit on fire
Had a 6.7 Cummins in the shop last month with a miss I chased for two days swapping sensors, and the machine found a cracked EGR cooler gasket in about 20 minutes. Anybody else got a tool they bought mad at themselves and then it paid for itself on the first job?
I dropped $80 on a set of those little plastic trim removal tools after years of using a flathead and scratching up dash panels. First car I used them on, a 2015 Civic, I popped off the whole center console in like 10 minutes with zero damage and the customer actually noticed how clean it looked. Then last week my wife needed the kitchen faucet cartridge swapped and those same tools saved me from chewing up the handle with a wrench. I keep finding that the stuff I buy angry at myself for is usually just me being too cheap to admit I needed it years ago. Same thing with a $15 headlamp, thought it was dumb, now I feel blind without it. Funny how that works.