These are Amazon links. They cost you nothing extra and they help pay for the tools in the next video.
Plastic push pin retainers are the most annoying fastener on a modern car, and almost everybody fights them with a flathead screwdriver. There is a tool that pulls them in one motion, it costs very little, and it changes how long undertray and trim jobs take.
A push pin is two pieces. There is a center pin and an outer body with legs that spread when the pin is driven home. To get one out with a screwdriver you have to lever the center pin up first, then go back and lever the body out.
In practice three things happen. The center pin goes flying. The body stays put and you lever against the panel until something marks or cracks. Or the pin comes up in two separate pieces and you are now fishing the body out of a hole with your fingers, usually on your back, usually with the car outside.
Multiply that by the twenty or thirty clips in a wheel arch liner or an engine undertray and you have lost a meaningful part of your afternoon to fasteners that cost pennies.
Push pin pliers have offset jaws with a notched, tapered tip designed to slide under the head of the clip and grip both halves at once. You get under the head, squeeze, and pull straight out. One motion, clip comes out whole.
In the video that is exactly what happens, one clip after another, each taking about a second. The larger diameter push pins come out just as easily as the small ones, which is where screwdrivers tend to struggle most because there is more body to drag through the hole.
This is the part people do not expect. The same pliers will hold a clip square and push it back into the hole, which is genuinely useful when the hole is somewhere your hand does not comfortably reach.
Anyone who has tried to start a push pin by hand, at an angle, above their head, knows the clip ends up cocked and the legs do not spread. Holding it in the jaws keeps it square while you seat it.
Clip design is not standard across manufacturers. On Nissans the pliers grab and reseat clips very reliably, which is most of what I work on. Other brands use different head profiles and some of those are a looser fit in the jaws.
So the honest position is this: for removal they work on essentially everything, because you are gripping under a head and pulling. For reinstallation the results depend on whose clip you are holding. That is still a good trade for the money.
The set in the video came from Harbor Freight and it works fine. This is not a tool that needs to be expensive. There is no precision ground surface and no mechanism to wear out, just a pair of offset jaws.
What matters is the tip. You want a thin, properly tapered tip that will slide under a clip head sitting flush against a panel. A thick tip will not get under anything and the tool becomes useless, which is the one way to buy a bad set.
If you take panels off cars more than about twice a year, yes. The time saved on a single undertray job covers the cost, and you stop snapping clips, which means you stop buying bags of replacements and you stop having panels that rattle because two fasteners are missing.
It is a small tool that removes a specific, repeated annoyance. Those are usually the best ones to own.
Not everything that looks like a push pin is one. There are three common types and they come out differently.
The true push pin has a center pin that drives down to spread the legs. These are what the pliers are for, and they come out whole in one pull.
Screw type rivets look almost identical but the center is a screw head. Attack one of those with pliers and you will shear the head off. Half a turn with a screwdriver first and then they lift straight out.
Then there are Christmas tree clips, with ribbed barbs and no center pin at all. Those just pull, and the pliers work well on them, but they are far more likely to break on removal because the barbs are designed to resist exactly what you are doing.
Sooner or later you will meet a clip where the center pin has been pushed right through, usually by somebody with a screwdriver before you. The body is now a hollow plastic plug sitting flush in the panel with nothing to grip.
Two things work. A small screw driven into the hollow center gives you something to pull against, and the pliers will then grip the screw head. Or a pair of needle nose pliers squeezed inside the hollow and opened slightly will grab the inner wall well enough to draw it out.
What does not work is levering against the panel. That is how you crack a wheel arch liner that was otherwise fine.
Even with the right tool, some clips break. They are old, they are brittle from heat cycling, and the legs snap. An assortment kit costs very little and means you are not driving away with an undertray held on by two thirds of its fasteners.
A missing undertray clip is not cosmetic. The tray flexes at speed, catches air, and takes the remaining clips with it. That is how a cheap plastic fastener turns into a panel dragging on the highway.
These are Amazon links. They cost you nothing extra and they help pay for the tools in the next video.
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