The Tools of the Trade: A Look Inside an Indy Car Racing Team's Toolbox

As we take a look inside an Indy car racing team's toolbox, it becomes clear that this is not your average set of tools. The equipment used to prepare and maintain these high-performance vehicles is anything but ordinary. We're talking about specialized tools that weigh in at over $10,000, including a heavy-duty air blower that can suck in spirits (or in this case, Indy car parts).

The tool kit in question starts with the basics: a chunk of metal with an electrical socket on the end. This simple device heats up when plugged into a power source and is used to warm up the oil in the engine. It's a crucial step in preparing the vehicle for racing, as the oil needs to be at a specific temperature before the engine can even be started. Next, we have a specialized tool that allows the team to check the level and pressure of the cooling system, ensuring that everything is functioning properly.

But what really takes this toolbox to the next level is the starter motor itself. Weighing in at over 1 ton, this massive machine requires some serious buffing to use. It's not unlike a Ghostbuster's proton pack, with its bulky design and powerful performance. And when it comes time to start the engine, the team uses a three-foot shaft to engage the starter, creating an enormous amount of torque that can almost break your wrist.

Compared to the starter in your average car, which might cost just a couple hundred dollars, this Indy car starter is a whopping $10,000. But even that's not the only expense involved in maintaining these high-performance vehicles. The team also has access to specialized tools like spring compressors and 3D-printed pieces, which allow them to make quick and precise adjustments to the suspension and braking systems.

One of the most impressive features of this toolbox is its ability to customize and adapt to specific applications. By using an off-the-shelf tool like a DeWalt air blower, the team can create custom solutions to their problems. For example, they've developed a 3D-printed piece that attaches to the side of the car, blowing air into the radiators to cool the engine when it comes into the pits.

As we take a closer look at this toolbox, it's clear that these tools are not just ordinary equipment. They're highly specialized and expensive, with some items costing tens of thousands of dollars. But even for an average mechanic or DIY enthusiast, there are many of these tools in their standard toolbox that can be used to work on Indy cars.

In fact, one of the most impressive things about this toolbox is how similar it is to our own shop's collection. We've got sockets, hex heads, wrenches, screwdrivers, and ratchets – all the same tools that any serious mechanic would use to work on an Indy car. The only real difference is the level of specialization and the sheer scale of the equipment used.

In conclusion, a team like Ray Hall's Letterman Lanigan Racing has access to some truly amazing tools that allow them to maintain and prepare their high-performance Indy cars. From massive starter motors to customized 3D-printed pieces, every tool in this toolbox is designed to help the team get an edge on the competition. And even for someone who doesn't have a million-dollar budget to work with, there are many of these tools that can be used to work on Indy cars – it's just a matter of knowing where to look.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat kind of tools does it take to work on a million dollar race car get my hands off some specialty tools to see how they compare to regular old mechanics toolbox some of these things cost tens of thousands of dollars and today I'm gonna see why welcome to Donut give it a quick first let's talk about one of the tools you're probably most familiar with and that is the impact gun pit crew when they need to change the wheel they got to do it fast and this thing can deliver a whole bunch of torque really quickly this one is made by Paoli and the same company that makes impact guns for NASCAR and F1 now unlike an impact gun which we use in the shop which is an electric this runs off air pressure 350 PSI to be exact and it can deliver up to 500 foot-pounds of torque like that now one thing you might notice is that this thing has one big old socket on the end of it and that's because these are driving Center lock wheels unlike your car's Wheels which use five smaller lugs this just uses one of them but that one has to be torqued on really really tight which is why you need a gun that can supply a whole bunch of torque and do it real quick now the amount of torque they need to put on that nut is about 500 foot-pounds and this thing can do it in about one second foreign typical socket will make contact with six sides this socket however contacts the lug across 20 individual specialty shaped teeth that Engage The Look to help it prevent stripping it also has 54 individual magnets around the outer edge that lock onto the face of the lug not only that it also is made from very expensive titanium if you're curious what one of these costs the impact gun alone is ten thousand dollars the socket is twenty five hundred dollars into service it it's anywhere from 1200 to 1300 which the team has to do multiple times a year now you have one gun for each wheel and you have two sets one for practice and one for race day all in all you're over a hundred thousand dollars just in Impact Guns alone and this is only the beginning of some of the insane tools used in a racing Pit Stop dude that's scary cooking in the garage is hard but thanks to today's sponsor hellofresh I discovered I should be cooking in here it's called a kit Chen and hellofresh will ship you the fresh ingredients and Tasty Recipes you need to become a kitchen Powerhouse plus they've got a meal for everyone whether it's veggie or carb smart or family friendly nobody will be left hungry with like 40 recipes you'll never be bored plus those recipes are customizable so go ahead and swap out your potatoes or upgrade to organic beef it's your meal so make it your way with meals from hellofresh I've saved so much money by not going out every time I'm hungry plus they help me figure out what this whole room was for so go to hellofresh.com and use code Donut media65 for 65 off plus free shipping that's hellofresh.com use code Donut media65 for 65 off plus free shipping so we know how to take a wheel off but how do we get the car up in the air so that we can take that wheel off well this is an air Jack and this is a super super cool piece of equipment used to get an Indy car off the ground the reason this thing is so long is there's a port underneath the car which just plugs into and it uses 450 PSI of air pressure to raise the car up in less than one second now the Jacks are built into the car and this is just an external thing that they can plug into and operate the system depending on the guy who uses it he'll cut custom grip tape and put it where he's going to be grabbing onto it to give him as much grip as possible because you want to make sure you stick it in there right perfect every time because seconds is money there's two sets of these Jacks there's a race set and then there's a practice set and the practice set has a little valve right here and this allows them to control that airflow so they can slowly raise or lower the car but during the race you want it as fast as possible so this just gives you all 450 PSI and a blink of an eye pretty cool now we couldn't even get some of the prices on some of these tools they were confidential but let's just say if they're not going to tell you the price then it's probably pretty expensive when it's time to fill up your Indy car what do you use use this this is a fuel filler and it feeds fuel at about three gallons per second you can fill an entire car up in six seconds and when I say gasoline I mean E85 Ethanol IndyCars use E85 not standard gasoline like you and I now a regular gas station pumps at 13 gallons per minute so it would take you a minute and a half to fill up a tank versus six seconds with this thing pretty impressive also it does that using gravity there are no pressurized systems in here they're not allowed to use that so it's just gravity fed straight into the tank when you plug this in it triggers a switch which allows this valve to open which triggers fuel flow through when you're done you pull it back out and that switch closes so you don't spill gas all over the place back in the day they didn't have that system you got a lot more leaks that leak could get on something hot cause a fire not good a fueler needs to know when he's got to pull this out and they have a little cool system right here with the sight glass there's a diaphragm in here with a little red indicator that indicator will lay down and then stand up when the car is almost full and then the guy can pull this out and the car can take off and this thing's heavy you got to be pretty buff to use this thing it weighs a ton this looks like a Ghostbuster thing just suck in the spirits now just to start an Indy car requires a bunch of specialized tools starting with this thing right here now this is nothing more than just a chunk of metal it's got an electrical socket on the end of it you plug it in and this heats up you put it down in the engine it heats the oil up and that's really important because you need that oil to be at a specific temperature before you can even start the engine the next thing you have to do is pressurize the cooling system so this is a special tool that allows to check the level and the pressure of that entire cooling system all the while a guy has a computer hooked up to the car that's reading all sorts of variables and sensors to make sure that it's good to start and then when they go to start it they use something like this oh my God now in your car you have a starter that's attached to the flywheel of the car it's connected to the crank when you turn the key it engages and it starts your car any cars they don't like that that's heavy takes a big old battery to do it and it's just cumbersome so they do it off board now inside here are three 12 volt car batteries required in series for 36 volts that gets sent all the way through this wire into the back of this big giant motor now right here is a three foot shaft that they need because they gotta have distance to get to the flywheel from the back of an Indy car and once they insert that shaft just starts with this one button it's a lot of torque I just almost broke my wrist so compared to a starter in your car which might be a couple hundred bucks this thing ten thousand dollars That's not including any of the other tools necessary to start one of these Indy cars now in addition to some of these standardized tools this team has a lot of individual specialty tools that are good for one particular purpose for example this is a spring compressor so when they want to make suspension changes or spring changes or preload changes they can load their shock and damper system up in here compress it then they can set whatever parameters they want for that shock and spring setup and the reason they have it this way is because it allows them to do that very quickly they can take it off the car put it right here next to this track side bench work on it put it back on the car now one thing a race team can do is take an off-the-shelf tool like this DeWalt air blower and custom 3D print pieces to make it suit their particular application so for example they use this they hang it on the side of the car and it blows air into the radiators to cool the car when it comes into the pits they also have one that's very similar where they just use a DeWalt battery and two big fans and they hook these over the brake ducts with a 3D printed piece that mates up perfectly to cool the brakes got a Mac Tool snap on Craftsman just going through some guy's toolbox and that brings us to one more really important piece of equipment that's your standard toolbox you got your sockets your hex heads wrenches screwdrivers ratchets all these things are used to prep the car while they're in here in the pits take off body panels replace suspension components rip out the gearbox they can do all of that with a nice good set of tools and looking at these tools it's nothing crazy different than a set of tools that you could buy or that we have in our shop so even you could work on an Indy car with a set of tools like this so it's hard to really calculate the true cost of this tool kit but it's easily hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars but even you have some tools that a million dollar race team has and that's in your standard toolbox thank you guys so much for watching this video I want to thank Ray Hall Letterman Lanigan race team Layla has come see all this stuff I get to pick up expensive tools it was a whole lot of fun so check them out as well thank you guys so much bye for now foreignwhat kind of tools does it take to work on a million dollar race car get my hands off some specialty tools to see how they compare to regular old mechanics toolbox some of these things cost tens of thousands of dollars and today I'm gonna see why welcome to Donut give it a quick first let's talk about one of the tools you're probably most familiar with and that is the impact gun pit crew when they need to change the wheel they got to do it fast and this thing can deliver a whole bunch of torque really quickly this one is made by Paoli and the same company that makes impact guns for NASCAR and F1 now unlike an impact gun which we use in the shop which is an electric this runs off air pressure 350 PSI to be exact and it can deliver up to 500 foot-pounds of torque like that now one thing you might notice is that this thing has one big old socket on the end of it and that's because these are driving Center lock wheels unlike your car's Wheels which use five smaller lugs this just uses one of them but that one has to be torqued on really really tight which is why you need a gun that can supply a whole bunch of torque and do it real quick now the amount of torque they need to put on that nut is about 500 foot-pounds and this thing can do it in about one second foreign typical socket will make contact with six sides this socket however contacts the lug across 20 individual specialty shaped teeth that Engage The Look to help it prevent stripping it also has 54 individual magnets around the outer edge that lock onto the face of the lug not only that it also is made from very expensive titanium if you're curious what one of these costs the impact gun alone is ten thousand dollars the socket is twenty five hundred dollars into service it it's anywhere from 1200 to 1300 which the team has to do multiple times a year now you have one gun for each wheel and you have two sets one for practice and one for race day all in all you're over a hundred thousand dollars just in Impact Guns alone and this is only the beginning of some of the insane tools used in a racing Pit Stop dude that's scary cooking in the garage is hard but thanks to today's sponsor hellofresh I discovered I should be cooking in here it's called a kit Chen and hellofresh will ship you the fresh ingredients and Tasty Recipes you need to become a kitchen Powerhouse plus they've got a meal for everyone whether it's veggie or carb smart or family friendly nobody will be left hungry with like 40 recipes you'll never be bored plus those recipes are customizable so go ahead and swap out your potatoes or upgrade to organic beef it's your meal so make it your way with meals from hellofresh I've saved so much money by not going out every time I'm hungry plus they help me figure out what this whole room was for so go to hellofresh.com and use code Donut media65 for 65 off plus free shipping that's hellofresh.com use code Donut media65 for 65 off plus free shipping so we know how to take a wheel off but how do we get the car up in the air so that we can take that wheel off well this is an air Jack and this is a super super cool piece of equipment used to get an Indy car off the ground the reason this thing is so long is there's a port underneath the car which just plugs into and it uses 450 PSI of air pressure to raise the car up in less than one second now the Jacks are built into the car and this is just an external thing that they can plug into and operate the system depending on the guy who uses it he'll cut custom grip tape and put it where he's going to be grabbing onto it to give him as much grip as possible because you want to make sure you stick it in there right perfect every time because seconds is money there's two sets of these Jacks there's a race set and then there's a practice set and the practice set has a little valve right here and this allows them to control that airflow so they can slowly raise or lower the car but during the race you want it as fast as possible so this just gives you all 450 PSI and a blink of an eye pretty cool now we couldn't even get some of the prices on some of these tools they were confidential but let's just say if they're not going to tell you the price then it's probably pretty expensive when it's time to fill up your Indy car what do you use use this this is a fuel filler and it feeds fuel at about three gallons per second you can fill an entire car up in six seconds and when I say gasoline I mean E85 Ethanol IndyCars use E85 not standard gasoline like you and I now a regular gas station pumps at 13 gallons per minute so it would take you a minute and a half to fill up a tank versus six seconds with this thing pretty impressive also it does that using gravity there are no pressurized systems in here they're not allowed to use that so it's just gravity fed straight into the tank when you plug this in it triggers a switch which allows this valve to open which triggers fuel flow through when you're done you pull it back out and that switch closes so you don't spill gas all over the place back in the day they didn't have that system you got a lot more leaks that leak could get on something hot cause a fire not good a fueler needs to know when he's got to pull this out and they have a little cool system right here with the sight glass there's a diaphragm in here with a little red indicator that indicator will lay down and then stand up when the car is almost full and then the guy can pull this out and the car can take off and this thing's heavy you got to be pretty buff to use this thing it weighs a ton this looks like a Ghostbuster thing just suck in the spirits now just to start an Indy car requires a bunch of specialized tools starting with this thing right here now this is nothing more than just a chunk of metal it's got an electrical socket on the end of it you plug it in and this heats up you put it down in the engine it heats the oil up and that's really important because you need that oil to be at a specific temperature before you can even start the engine the next thing you have to do is pressurize the cooling system so this is a special tool that allows to check the level and the pressure of that entire cooling system all the while a guy has a computer hooked up to the car that's reading all sorts of variables and sensors to make sure that it's good to start and then when they go to start it they use something like this oh my God now in your car you have a starter that's attached to the flywheel of the car it's connected to the crank when you turn the key it engages and it starts your car any cars they don't like that that's heavy takes a big old battery to do it and it's just cumbersome so they do it off board now inside here are three 12 volt car batteries required in series for 36 volts that gets sent all the way through this wire into the back of this big giant motor now right here is a three foot shaft that they need because they gotta have distance to get to the flywheel from the back of an Indy car and once they insert that shaft just starts with this one button it's a lot of torque I just almost broke my wrist so compared to a starter in your car which might be a couple hundred bucks this thing ten thousand dollars That's not including any of the other tools necessary to start one of these Indy cars now in addition to some of these standardized tools this team has a lot of individual specialty tools that are good for one particular purpose for example this is a spring compressor so when they want to make suspension changes or spring changes or preload changes they can load their shock and damper system up in here compress it then they can set whatever parameters they want for that shock and spring setup and the reason they have it this way is because it allows them to do that very quickly they can take it off the car put it right here next to this track side bench work on it put it back on the car now one thing a race team can do is take an off-the-shelf tool like this DeWalt air blower and custom 3D print pieces to make it suit their particular application so for example they use this they hang it on the side of the car and it blows air into the radiators to cool the car when it comes into the pits they also have one that's very similar where they just use a DeWalt battery and two big fans and they hook these over the brake ducts with a 3D printed piece that mates up perfectly to cool the brakes got a Mac Tool snap on Craftsman just going through some guy's toolbox and that brings us to one more really important piece of equipment that's your standard toolbox you got your sockets your hex heads wrenches screwdrivers ratchets all these things are used to prep the car while they're in here in the pits take off body panels replace suspension components rip out the gearbox they can do all of that with a nice good set of tools and looking at these tools it's nothing crazy different than a set of tools that you could buy or that we have in our shop so even you could work on an Indy car with a set of tools like this so it's hard to really calculate the true cost of this tool kit but it's easily hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars but even you have some tools that a million dollar race team has and that's in your standard toolbox thank you guys so much for watching this video I want to thank Ray Hall Letterman Lanigan race team Layla has come see all this stuff I get to pick up expensive tools it was a whole lot of fun so check them out as well thank you guys so much bye for now foreign