Stuff We Use: Creepers and Seats

On our never-ending quest to improve this place by listening to feedback from the B&B, we are taking a new tack with these product posts, choosing instead to focus on items we have actually used or purchased with our own meagre income. After all, if we’re giving you the truth about cars, we ought to give you the truth about car accessories.

Most of our readers spend untold hours fixing a hooptie, helping a friend with basic car maintenance, or just generally spiffing up their ride. It’s why you’re here – and we’re thankful for it. Here’s our take on a tool we find to be of particular use, especially as most of the TTAC staff begins to age into their fourth decade on this earth.

Floor creepers and wheeled seats can be a godsend for those of us who detest slowly sliding underneath a car or prefer not to drop a squat for 20 minutes whilst polishing those cloudy headlights on an older Ford for the umpteenth time. In other words, they’re not just for old people.

There are no shortage of options floating around places like eBay, such as this old-school blow molded plastic model which has a skiff of padding for yer head and not much else. Some of these types are ultra-low profile, however – so don’t write them off completely if one is constantly doing work on a low-slung coupe. This precise unit darkened this author’s garage for the better part of a decade and was a worthy companion until it finally crumbled after a lifetime worth of work.  

If slotting underneath a vehicle isn’t in the plans, a rolling shop seat may be a better spend of hard-earned money. Look for one with a decently padded cushion (make your juvenile jokes here) and an integrated tray hove between the frame rails. The latter is a key and common component of these seats, extremely useful for those of us who don’t always feel the need to file away each and every tool after extracting a bolt. Yes, there’s merit to that approach but for some jobs this writer finds it preferable having his tools to hand – especially if a maze of differently sized fasteners is causing a headache.

One fantastic feature which has been cropping up in these tray underneath wheeled creeper seats is the addition of magnetization to one of the partitioned trays. This is a boon for catching and keeping fasteners or bolts and the like, keeping them from vanishing right into thin air during reassembly. How many of you lot have stepped on a hubcap containing five lug nuts, causing the blasted things to fly across a garage with sufficient force to dent drywall? Oh, just me? Very good, then.

A third option in this segment is a recent(ish) rise of creepers which can convert from the flat style to a wheeled seat, such as this one. Deployed as a stretcher-style creeper for sliding under cars, it has a padded surface and six wheels. Popping out a cotter pin and rising the top half skyward moves the unit into a ‘Z’ shape, with the padding formerly meant for a mechanic’s head now serving as a cushion for seating. It goes without saying to reinstall that cotter pin in order to keep the whole thing from unfolding itself just as you’re arms deep in a repair or carefully applying that last bit of polishing agent to a set of headlamps. This style of seat was my replacement for the old creeper which bit the dust and, despite initial reservations about too many moving parts, has performed remarkably well.