You have a pretty odd definition of "specialized". A jack is a jack. Yes, I use a big one for my truck since it weighs many thousands of pounds. I use the same jack to lift small cars and anything else I want, within reason.
A torque wrench is a specialized tool...for torquing a fastener. I use the torque wrench to torque fasteners on my truck, my motorcycle, some random piece of equipment I want to repair, etc.
I have seal drivers for driving seals on my motorcycle. I also can use them on hydraulic cylinders, or any other random seal I want to drive in.
The only truly specialized piece of auto repair tooling I have is a tool that is cast and machined specifically to fit inside the engine head to remove a portion of the valvetrain for maintenance. It's a very boring once you understand how it works, but I'm not using it for anything else.
As for a spring compressor, I've been doing suspension work for about a decade now and used one zero times. You just don't need it for routine maintenance. I guess if a spring breaks, you would need it in some weird circumstance possibly.
Well yes, I suppose if you also have a motorcycle and a truck and some miscellaneous hydraulic machinery that you work on yourself, then you will also use most of the tools you use for car maintenance to work on other things.
For someone who owns a car and nothing else with an internal combustion engine except maybe a lawnmower, most of those tools are only used to work on their car.
There are of course also specialized tools you need to work on a bicycle- tire levers and a chain link breaker, for instance. But they're much smaller and cheaper.
> The only specialized tool you need for a bike is a spoke wrench.
And a chain whip, and a lockring bit for brakes/cassette, and another bit for the bottom bracket, and some pin spanners maybe, a derailer alignment gauge, maybe crank puller, tire levers, chain breaker, and master link pliers. Hydraulic brakes? Bleed kit, piston press. Pneumatic suspension? Shock pump. Tubeless? Better get a syringe to refill sealant through valves (and don't forget the valve core wrench) or reset your tires every time you need new sealant.
You do need all that if you want to perform maintenance on a bike. I assure you that the average person won't be able to replace a cassette, which is a wear item, with an Allen wrench and a socket wrench. Or replace disk brakes, or a chain ring, which are also wear items. I imagine you can use an Allen bit as a lever when you need to access tubes or replace tires (wear items both), but it does have high probability of damaging your rims, which, again will need lockring bits and a chain whip to replace, at least on the rear wheel. Chain is another wear item, I figure you can just hammer out pins with a thin Allen key to cut a new chain and use the same technique to remove the old one but your hammering technique should be very precise to retain the pin, you cannot put them back in once you hammered them out too far, not even with a socket wrench.
A torque wrench is a specialized tool...for torquing a fastener. I use the torque wrench to torque fasteners on my truck, my motorcycle, some random piece of equipment I want to repair, etc.
I have seal drivers for driving seals on my motorcycle. I also can use them on hydraulic cylinders, or any other random seal I want to drive in.
The only truly specialized piece of auto repair tooling I have is a tool that is cast and machined specifically to fit inside the engine head to remove a portion of the valvetrain for maintenance. It's a very boring once you understand how it works, but I'm not using it for anything else.
As for a spring compressor, I've been doing suspension work for about a decade now and used one zero times. You just don't need it for routine maintenance. I guess if a spring breaks, you would need it in some weird circumstance possibly.