Great Gift Ideas: Gifts for Car Guys Under $20

Every home mechanic should have a good pair of safety glasses in the toolbox. We have a pair about every 10 feet in our shop and recommend wearing them for most tasks. Most car people do have some safety glasses, but do they have a really good pair? What's the difference, you ask? Lots. These glasses from Snap-On have truly shatterproof lenses, fit your head securely and comfortably, and most important they have an anti-fog coating on them. This may not seem like a big deal, but ask anyone who's been trying to disconnect a CV joint through fogged lenses and they'll tell you how much they'd appreciate a little anti-fog.

I see too many home mechanics without one of these. It's a rod with a magnet on the end. Big deal, you're thinking. The magnetic pick up tool can be a real lifesaver. Picture this: you're working on your distributor (or coil pack, don't want to date myself too much) and you drop a small screw or bolt. It falls into a tight crevice and your fingers are useless to get it out. If you have a magnetic pick up tool you need only stick it into the crevice and your can finish the job. No pick up tool and you're trying to figure out how to get some chewing gum stuck to a fishing rod ... or something.

This great car gift is so cheap it's practically a stocking stuffer. But cheap as it may be, a gasket scraper is an invaluable tool for a home mechanic to have in the tool box. A gasket relies on the smooth surface of the metal parts it's trying to seal together. Anything less than smooth and you might be headed for a leak. Scraping with razor blades or screwdrivers is ill advised. Your car lover needs a real gasket scraper to get the job done right. It tends to be the last tool most guys buy, so do a good turn and give a great gift!

Even the simplest car repair or modification will yield a pile of screws, nuts, bolts, clips and other bits that hold the car together. If you've ever neatly piled all of your hardware together in a "safe" place only to kick it across the garage floor an hour later, you can see the value in a parts tray that magnetically holds all of these little bits in one place -- safely. This is the gift that will save you from getting an earful of expletives.

If you're not sure what to get your car guy or car gal, you can always turn to a holiday standby, the nutcracker. But this is no laughing soldier, this is a nutcracker for mechanics, and it's got teeth. Freeing a stuck or rusted nut can be a real pain. This Nutcracker from Craftsman can split a nut into two pieces. If you've tried the usual methods of heat, penetrant, Vise-Grips and everything else you can throw at it, this Nutcracker will probably solve your problem. Makes a great and unexpected gift. Feel free to re-use my nutcracker jokes, too.