Magnetic Finger and Flexible Magnetic Flashlight

Shortly after I dropped my wife off at the airport ten days ago, when I next had to unlock the door to her car, the key pushed the lock into the door.  Luckily there's a passenger side door with another keyhole.








When I got home I first tried my buddy google to see how hard it would be for me to fix it.  Step one is remove the inside panel of the door.  The instructions to do that were formidable.  Don't break the plastic clips.  Disconnect the plug for the power windows.  I called the mechanic my wife uses and took it in the next day.  But after reading about taking off the door panel, I really wanted to watch how he did it and they let me.

I'm glad he did it and not me.  He's got lots of specialized tools and even he had to figure out what exactly to do on that model.  There's a lot of stuff behind the door panel.

He did find the screw that holds the lock in place down inside the door panel, but putting it back in was hard.  I suggested he needed a magnetic finger.  He looked at me and said, "I have one." Off he went and shortly came back with the finger glove with a little magnet on the tip.  It was still to hard to maneuver, and then he realized there was a little hole right where the screw belonged but he couldn't get to it because the window was down.  Once it was up it was easy.  

He also had this very cool flashlight that magnetically attached to the car and could be twisted and turned in all directions.

$100 later, the lock was firmly where it belonged. 


I love it when I discover specialized tools likes these.  Somebody came up with an idea for a way to solve a problem - like the magnetic finger - and then went ahead and made one.  And a magnetic flashlight you just put on any metal that bends to shine the light where you need it.