Buying guides
Which one, for the job you actually have
A hub compares everything in a family. A guide answers one question — a budget, a first set of tools for someone servicing their own car for the first time, the three things that turn a driveway into a place you can work — with a ranked shortlist and a reason for the order.
- Diagnostics
The first diagnostic tool: reader, dongle or scanner
Three price tiers, three genuinely different capabilities — and the question that decides which one you need before you spend anything.
- Buying
Jump starter or charger: rescue, or prevention
One gets a flat car running; the other stops it going flat. Which you need depends on how often the car moves, not on how much you spend.
- Servicing
Brake tools: what the job needs, and where this site stops
Press or rewind, pressure or vacuum bleeding, and the electronic parking brake that no mechanical tool can retract.
- Getting started
In the boot: five things worth the space
The small kit that covers the roadside problems you can actually solve, and the two that live indoors instead.
- Servicing
Before winter: four checks and the tools for them
The battery, the tyres, the terminals and the lights — the checks that prevent a January failure, and what each needs.