Reviews & Features – Page 2 – The Garage Journal

A few months back, my mom hit me with a request that made my blood run cold… She wanted a garage door opener she could control from her phone. I had visions of midnight tech support calls and FaceTime sessions filled with “it’s not working again.” But hell, she’s my mom, so I dove in. I don’t run a full-blown Smart Home because, frankly, I like my house dumb. Just about every “convenience” I’ve added over the years has turned into some kind of digital tantrum when the Wi-Fi farts. So I needed something simple, reliable, and most importantly – …

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I don’t usually give a damn about laser measuring gadgets. The only one I’ve ever owned was some cheap Bosch “Blaze” I grabbed for fifty bucks. It was fine for rough numbers… good enough to measure a closet, not good enough to trust when cutting lumber for built-ins. A toy, really. Then Mileseey threw me a curveball: the new S50. Supposedly a hotshot accuracy monster with a green laser bright enough to blind a squirrel, four reference points, dead-on within a sixteenth at 400 feet, slick IPS screen, and a battery system so clever you can run it on AAs …

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Our forums get hit all the time by people trying to sneak in promotions. Sometimes it’s a company pretending to be just another guy who “stumbled onto” a miracle product, other times it’s a YouTuber begging for clicks and likes. It only takes a second to ban them, but the constant parade of it gets old fast. I’ve always believed that if you make something worth a damn, you don’t need to shove it down people’s throats. Good work speaks for itself and word of mouth travels faster and hits harder than spam on a little forum like ours ever …

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This is probably terrible advice—hell, borderline irresponsible. Do your own research, trust your instincts, question everything. But I’ll tell you this: my favorite ear protection in the shop? Apple AirPods. Yeah, I know. But if they fit your ears right and your brain doesn’t rebel against the noise-canceling voodoo, they just disappear. No pressure, no bulk, just quiet and clarity while the chaos rages around you. But here’s the catch—you need the Pro model for proper noise canceling, and they’re not exactly built for shop abuse. Dust, metal shavings, and random acts of violence tend to chew up dainty tech …

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Most of my time in the shop is spent buried in ancient steel—real cars, not these wheezing modern things laced with silicon and shame. I hot rod, goddammit. I take something that works, rip out the compromises, and replace them with speed and danger. And I do it all with tools, not a laptop. So when Innova emailed me asking if I’d like to review one of their OBD2 scanners, I laughed. Out loud. “Wrong guy,” I told them. I don’t own anything new enough to need one. My shop is where computers go to die. They sent it anyway. …

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