Vintage Tools for Maintaining Classic Cars | NPD Shop Tour
If you’re going to have classic cars, it’s probably a good idea to have some classic tools to keep them running. That’s exactly what we found when we strolled into the shop area of the National Parts Depot 200+ vehicle deep car collection. With all these cars under one roof, it’s not surprising that they have a full shop right in the middle of it all and man whose full-time job is caring for the mechanical condition of each piece on display.
So it’s not surprising that NPD has a collection of vintage shop tools that you’re just not going to find in a typical shop. Have a car with way-pre-OBD II fuel injection? They have a diagnostic computer that size of a small truck that can print out sensor data for you? Need to set the dwell on a points style distributor? They have what’s essentially a distributor dyno to help you make adjustments. This vid gives you a good idea of what they have to work with in the shop:
I could probably spend a day just learning how each of these various diagnostic tools work. If you guys are interested in seeing some of this vintage equipment in action, let me know. I’ll try to get NPD’s shop manager to give us a tutorial on how some this vintage tech works. At the end of the day, I’m glad to see that NPD is preserving tools like this and using them as intended to maintain an awesome gathering of American Iron.
-SID297
