I’ve always had trouble taking out the push pins around the wheel arch guards as they often split and are then a real pain to remove (old plastic?). A bag of new push pins courtesy of eBay helps but sometimes it’s still fiddly. A friend from the USofA just sent me a magical pair of push pin pliers saying “these are what they use on production lines” and I can see why. They just work so well and easily!!! One little squeeze and “click” they pop out! I can do the whole wheel arch in 10-15 seconds!!! The angled beak is great for getting into the tricky spots. I’ve seen them on EBay but only from the USA with silly postage but I would still strongly recommend them if your felling flush. If I had access to a forge I’d be bending and grinding some needle nosed pliers and flogging them off to you all as push pin removers.............. Anyone else found or made some handy Copen repair tools?
That looks like a useful addition to the toolkit. Are the prongs offset ? The first picture looks like they grab the fixing from the side whereas the second looks like it grabs it top and bottom ?
The prongs are offset about 80 degrees which makes it surprisingly easy to get to all the poppers wherever they are positioned. You open the pliers, place the teeth into two opposing grooves (out of the four) in the outer mushroom (where you would normally put your screwdriver) and squeeze, not that hard. The teeth slide under the inner mushroom plug and because of their ground angle and sloping jaws just pop the centre pin out. Unbelievably easy!! Wish I could let you try them....... Anyone got any meetings planned?
I use a combination of the Hazet panel fastener tool and a cheap nylon kit from eBay. They've done the job on a wide variety of cars. That GearWrench tool looks like a very nice variation.