The Whole Garage Catalogue: May 2013

Sunday, May 12, 2013

A Vaco TK-550 6-12 Volt Tester

The Vaco Products Company is no more; it was acquired by Klein Tools in 1986.

This tester would be for probing for the presence of B+ voltage in automotive troubleshooting work. You'd connect the alligator clip to chassis ground. Anytime the probe tip contacted a B+ energized point, a light inside the handle would go on. Conversely, you could connect the alligator clip to B+, and probe for the presence of a ground point. Here's a view of the tool's innards.

The light bulb is a No. 1816, 13.0 volt miniature bayonet type. On a six volt vehicle, the light would be dim, but still useable. (Six volt vehicles are a distant memory now. I recall a 1949 Mercury pickup truck, and a Ford 8N tractor that had six volt systems.)

This can go in a bin where I keep some miscellaneous electrical gear.

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Introduction

This blog is in honour of my deceased father, Nick Gaspick.

It sprang from what had started out as merely a post on my workshop blog, Rouge River Workshop. Here's my introduction to that post:

"My son has been clearing out my deceased father's garage, so he'll have a place to restore an old car, and he's been finding all manner of stuff. I've begun one post about an old woodworking vise that I mean to restore. This weekend, my son brought me four toolboxes full of items. As a small honour to my father, I'll 'catalogue' them in this post, in no particular order, little-by-little as I go through the boxes."

The nature of the post was for it to grow ever longer, and that can be dangerous. Blogger has some quirks that I've experienced in the past, and I was getting tired of always backing up the entire post so I wouldn't lose it should Blogger vapourize an editing session. I finally decided to make a full-blown blog with an index out of the post. Here it is.

I'll leave the original post as it is, where it is, but I'll bring over all the items in it so far as individual, indexed posts here as well. Needless to say, new material will only appear here.

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A Little About My Father:

My father emigrated to Canada with his family from Croatia at about the age of seven. His family took on a homestead up Sudbury, Ontario way, and made a living there through the great depression.

My father loved school, and yearned to continue his schooling past grade eight, but that was not on. He had to leave school to make a living -- trapping, mining, whatever. Eventually, he and his made their way to Toronto -- the big smoke in Canada.

My father was built like a brick shit-house; he was a sturdy guy, unlike scrawny me. My father was a guy who could clear an acre of Canadian bush before breakfast, have it tilled and planted before lunchtime, with the plants sprouting before dinnertime.

Jesus H. Christ!-- a guy like my father ought to have lived forever!