Making a Tool for removing dash escutcheon nuts
For years, I put up with makeshift methods of removing those pesky nuts that hold the Headlight, Wiper, Hazard switches in. Tired of the gouged dashes and personal injuries, I vowed to make a tool for the job. Oh, I know, you can buy one, but spending hard cash for that tool is not at the top of the list.
I had a length of 1/2" steel tubing lying around, so I cut a short piece off.
Then made 4 hacksaw cuts to produce the 2 "teeth". Bend the teeth in slightly to make them curved. File a bit to make sure they fit snugly in the slots in the nut.
The tool would work just as shown, but a nice refinement is to add a "guide" which slips over the switch shaft.
You can use anything handy. This was a piece of plastic lying in my
junk box. A good source of odd parts is the medicine cabinet; it can
be a treasure trove of precise little plastic bits. I epoxied this
one into the tubing.
Here's how it fits over the shaft in use:
The tool really needed a proper handle to make it functional. Rooting through the junk boxes, I came upon this perfect "handle":
OK, it was a trifle large, so I settled for this 20d nail which had only minimal rust:
This will become a permanent addition to my toolbox and scratched switches and dashes will be a thing of the past...