Tips For Dressing Up For A Car Repair Job

How you dress while repairing your car influences how safe you are during the whole process. There are several types of safety wear that you need to prevent injuries. It's not just about wearing gloves and protective shoes. The specific wear to use depends on the nature of the work you need to do on your car, but there are a few common things you will need. Here are four examples of how to dress for a car repair session:

Wear Safety Goggles

Your eyes are some of the most sensitive and essential parts of your body, so you don't want even the most superficial injury to affect them. During car repair, threats to your eyes may come in the form of dirt, metal chips (such as those released when grinding or pounding metal), acid (from the battery), cooling refrigerant and other forms of debris. Apart from things that may enter your eyes, there is also the threat of physical trauma to the eyes due to, say, a loose car part falling off. Regular prescription glasses will not cut it here; you need safety goggles specifically meant for workshop or garage safety.

Wear Ear Plugs

Prolonged exposure to noise can damage your ears. Yet, ear protection is easy to ignore because ear damage is not something people associate with car repair. However, if you are going to grind, saw, drill, hammer or pound anything, then you are going to generate considerable noise. Any job that involves the use of a pneumatic tool is likely to generate a lot of noises. Fortunately, you can prevent damage to your eardrum by wearing earplugs or earphone ear protectors.

Use Breathing Protection

Even your nose is not immune to the threats caused by car repair to your body. Dangers to your nose include paint (for example during spray painting), chemical fumes and dust particles such as those from sanding metal parts. Nose protection is unique in that you need to customize it to fit the threat at hand. For example, a dust mask is useful for protecting your nasal cavity from small particles, but not from chemical fumes. For paint or chemical protection, use OSHA-approved masks that have been proven to block chemical fumes.

Avoid Loose Clothing

You shouldn't be working on your car with anything that may become entangled in moving parts and injure you. Therefore, avoid neckties, hanging pieces of jewelry scarves and other types of loose clothing. In fact, even your long hair may be a hazard; imagine what would happen if it got caught in a pulley. All you have to do to avoid such a mishap is to tie back your hair or cover it.

If you don't have these things, then you are not ready for DIY car repair. You are better off taking your car to a professional mechanic like Windy's Collision Center who has the necessary protective wear.