Anyone know how old this Park tool box might be?

[ironheadtom]

I'd pretty much given up on yard sales these days, but picked up this box full of misc. stuff for 5 bucks. One thing in it was an interesting old Craftsman wrench I'd never seen before. Anyway I tried to research the box and came up with nothing. Model is 85551. Thanks

 

[TheGrooveking]

That box dates to the mid 70's and I know this because I bought one at K-Mart's to use for my control line airplane kit, it was $9.95 IRC. The wrench is a tappet wrench, designed to hold the adjustment nut on a rocker arm while you locked down the jam nut when you were adjusting backlash on a car's valvetrain.

TheGrooveking

 

[Packard V8]

The Park box is probably about twenty years old.

The Craftsman wrench is a tappet wrench, for adjusting valve clearance on older engines with mechanical lifters.

OT, but back in the day, some engines which came with hydraulic lifters and thus no means of adjustment, were converted to higher performance mechanical lifter camshafts. This meant buying and using adjustable pushrods. To set the valve clearance with adjustable pushrods required a four-handed mechanic using three 3/8" OE tappet wrenches - one to hold the pushrod, a second to hold the upper ball end and the third to loosen/tighten the lock nut and the fourth to use the feeler gauge.

jack vines

 

[ironheadtom]

Thanks. The collective knowledge on this board is priceless.