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Many DIY projects at home involve a lot of physical effort. Although this might not be an issue if you’re younger, you might start having some second thoughts about working on more complicated projects as you get older. Because we’re often not as spry and nimble when we get older, it’s wise to adjust our tools and workflow to take our age into consideration.

In fact, I found out about this the hard way when I had to carry a heavy load in an emergency. Since I’m much closer to 40 now than 30, that incident resulted in lower back pain that saw me getting a doctor’s appointment. This resulted in several tests and eight weeks of therapy, which, thankfully, my insurance covered fully. And while I no longer have pain in my lower back, I still feel pressure at the affected area at times, especially when I’m sitting or standing for long periods.

That’s why it’s important that you protect your back, especially when doing some heavy DIY work. To help you do that, we’re listing some back-saving tools and accessories to keep your back in good condition. Whether you’re an older DIYer or a young adult just getting into the hobby, you should consider these items to help prevent life-altering injuries.

A cart is often quite convenient if you need to move heavy articles around your property, especially if you’re moving them across paved surfaces. But if you want something flexible with a good, solid base that can carry a ton of different items, consider getting a platform hand truck. 

The large, solid base on this equipment makes it quite versatile, as you can put a lot of different items on it without worrying that they will fall through the gaps, like on this convertible hand truck from Harbor Freight that’s useful for moving. Aside from that, it usually has a high carrying capacity for transporting heavy items one at a time, or you can pile in several smaller items, allowing you to take several items simultaneously instead of making multiple trips.

For example, this MaxWorks foldable platform truck push dolly has a maximum weight capacity of 660 pounds and features a textured platform to prevent your cargo from sliding around unnecessarily. It comes with a padded handle for easy handling and padded edges to avoid damage when you bump into walls. You’ll also get four heavy-duty wheels, with the rear two capable of rotating 360 degrees for better maneuverability. Most importantly, it costs less than $68 on Amazon, meaning it’s a small but durable investment that will make it easy to move heavy items around without risking your back.

If you need to move a heavy piece of furniture or appliance, you should consider using furniture moving straps, such as this one from Shoulder Dolly. Note that using this tool is a two-person job, as two people must wear the harness across their shoulders. They slip the strap under the item that they want to carry, adjust it accordingly, and lift with their legs simultaneously.

What it does is carry most of the weight of the item on the strap, which is then spread across the torsos and legs of the users. That does not mean that you can use the device hands-free, though — you still need to support it by pushing against the object you’re lifting as you both stand up to give it stability. You also need to know your limitations, as you still have to exert effort to lift and move the objects. The Shoulder Dolly doesn’t carry the weight for you; it just safely distributes the load across your bodies. But with proper use, this gadget helps two people safely carry up to 800 pounds.

This item was first developed for professional movers, but is now widely available to just about anyone who needs to do heavy lifting. It’s also quite affordable, as you can get the Shoulder Dolly for under $50 on Amazon. So, if you like to frequently do DIY renovations and rearrange your furniture and appliances, this is the perfect solution to help you avoid back injuries.

You’ve probably heard of standing desks and the benefits that they deliver to remote workers, but did you know that DIYers could also take advantage of the same adjustable-height technology when it comes to their workbenches? Since you’re most probably exerting effort when you’re using your workbench, it’s good to have it placed at the ideal waist-level height. That way, you’ll find yourself in a comfortable posture as you work on your project, reducing the chances that you’ll get a repetitive strain injury, back pain, or joint issues.

If you’re buying a workbench for yourself, you may think that you don’t need a height-adjustable model as you won’t share it with others. But it’s still nice to have the option to adjust its height, as the height you’re comfortable with may vary depending on the task at hand. For example, you might want to lower your workbench and use it as a table when you’re planning your next woodworking project, but raise it to waist level when you’re screwing together the pieces that you’re working on while you’re standing up.

However, you shouldn’t just get any height-adjustable workbench when you’re out shopping. Look for something that’s sturdy enough to withstand the projects that you intend to do and has useful features like tool holders and wheels for easy movement. These extra features can cost you, though, with one example, the Vevor Work Bench for Garage demanding more than $360 on Amazon. You can also pick one from Lowe’s workbench and table offerings at around the same price range. But considering you can use this for several years and avoid health issues, it could be well worth the investment.

A power drill is a quite versatile tool to have in your DIY kit, as you can use it for both drilling holes and driving screws. However, if you encounter a particularly stubborn screw or bolt that has been torqued down way too much, you’d need to put a lot of pressure on it by physically pushing your drill into the screw head while holding it steady to counteract the reactionary torque.

This means you’re probably exerting a lot of effort using your entire body, and if you make one wrong move, you could end up with a bad back. To prevent this, consider adding an impact driver to your power drill collection. While you’d still use the latter for making holes on surfaces, the former is far more useful for driving screws and bolts.

What makes an impact driver different from a power drill is its driving mechanism. Instead of just using a powerful motor, this tool uses a hammer-and-anvil mechanism, wherein the hammer is pulled by a spring around an axis. This allows the tool to build up potential energy, which is then released in one go. The hammer then hits the anvil, which drives the collet and bit with much greater force than if driven directly by a motor. Because of this, you do not need to exert as much effort when you’re using it, saving muscle strain and reducing the potential for injury. 

Tool belts are quite handy accessories that help keep all your tools within reach. Tools tend to be quite heavy items, and the usual belt design concentrates all that weight on your hips and lower back. This can lead to body aches, pains, and fatigue, especially with prolonged use and uneven tool distribution.

Because of this, we suggest getting an ergonomic tool belt to help save your back. This accessory still puts a belt around you, where you hang all your tools. However, it also comes with thick, padded shoulder suspenders to distribute the weight across your shoulders and reduce the pressure on your hips and lower back.

One example of an ergonomic tool belt is the Milwaukee Contractor Work Belt with Suspension Rig, just one of Milwaukee’s products that will save your back. Some DIYers might balk at its $139.99 price at Ace Hardware, but having this may prove priceless as it can ease your workload and contribute to preventing injury. 

Ford’s 7.3-liter “Godzilla” V8 earned a lot of attention when it debuted under the hood of F-Series Super Duty trucks for the 2020 model year. It wasn’t just from heavy-duty pickup truck buyers, either, but also from fans of the American V8 engine in general — and rightfully so. The Godzilla’s 430 hp and 485 lb-ft of torque are impressive figures, but that was just part of the story. What really makes the Godzilla special is the way it stands out from other modern V8s on the market.

Despite being an all-new engine design from Ford, the Godzilla forgoes modern tech like overhead cams and forced induction. Instead, it’s a classic pushrod V8 that delivers its power with old-school, big-displacement simplicity. But how does this brute of an engine stack up against other modern V8s in terms of output? We’ve rounded up five different V8s that outdo that mighty Godzilla when it comes to horsepower — albeit with some significant asterisks when it comes to both price and purpose.

For this grouping, we’ve limited our selections to naturally aspirated gasoline V8s currently available in new vehicles, excluding V8s with superchargers or turbochargers, as well as turbodiesel engines. While all of these V8s indeed outdo the Godzilla in peak horsepower, many of them are built for entirely different types of vehicles, and comparing their specs truly helps bolster the Godzilla’s reputation as one of the more unique V8 engines of the modern era. 

One smaller V8 engine that outpowers the Godzilla comes from right within the Ford family. That engine would be the tried-and-true Ford 5.0 V8, often known as the Coyote. Ford currently offers a few different variants of its DOHC 5.0, with the more yeoman F-150 pickup version already making 400 hp. It’s in the modern Mustang, though, where the Coyote leaps ahead of the Godzilla in peak horsepower. 

In the standard Mustang GT, the 5.0 makes 480 hp, and that number jumps to 500 hp in the fast and highly-entertaining Mustang Dark Horse. However, being a big-displacement truck motor, the Godzilla’s 485 lb-ft of torque easily outpulls the 418 lb-ft of the smaller, higher-revving 5.0. And as you’d expect from a truck engine, the larger 7.3 makes its peak torque and power at significantly lower revs than the Coyote — 5,000 and 4,400 rpm, respectively, versus the Dark Horse’s 7,250 and 4,900 rpm.

Comparing these two engines is very fascinating. Both are modern, naturally aspirated, mass-produced V8 engines from Ford, but that’s about where their similarities end. In that sense, it’s a lot like the old days when American carmakers offered both high-winding small-block V8s for performance cars and larger, more utilitarian big-block V8s for their heavy-duty trucks. 

When Ford released the Godzilla engine, the most notable thing about it wasn’t just it’s size, it was the fact that it used the old school, overhead-valve pushrod design, which Ford had moved away from when it began introducing its modular, overhead cam V8s in the 1990s. Chevrolet, on the other hand, has stuck with pushrods and has plenty of V8-powered models in its lineup.

In terms of truck engines, Chevy currently does not have any naturally-aspirated V8s that outpower the Godzilla, though its 6.6-liter V8 HD truck engine puts up a decent fight in both horsepower and torque. And with the Camaro now out of the picture, you need to move over to the Corvette lineup to find a naturally aspirated Chevy V8 that outpowers the Ford 7.3.

The entry-level C8 Corvette Stingray, which is not “entry-level” at all when it comes to performance, is powered by the LT2, a naturally-aspirated 6.2-liter pushrod V8 that makes 490 hp as standard or 495 hp with the performance exhaust option. What about torque? At 470 lb-ft, the Corvette comes close to the Godzilla’s torque output. Since it’s a smaller performance car engine, though, the LT2 only hits that number at 5,150 rpm, a few hundred more revs than the Godzilla.

With naturally aspirated V8s going out of favor around the global industry, Toyota is one of the only non-American manufacturers to offer a naturally aspirated V8 of any type, let alone one that outpowers the Ford Godzilla. That engine is the 5.0-liter DOHC 2UR-GSE V8, which ranks among the most powerful engines that Toyota has ever built, V8 or otherwise. 

Offered in the Lexus LC 500 Coupe as well as the IS 500 sedan, which it discontinued in 2025, the 2UR-GSE makes 471 naturally aspirated horsepower. As you’d imagine from a significantly smaller, DOHC engine used in a luxury performance car, the 2UR’s advantage over the Godzilla does not carry over to the torque department. Rated at 398 lb-ft of torque, the Lexus engine is down nearly 100 lb-ft from the workhorse Ford 7.3 — totally expected considering the very different types of vehicles these engines power. 

A closer Toyota V8 to the Godzilla, at least in terms of vehicle, would have to be the now-discontinued 5.7-liter from the second-generation Tundra and Sequoia. While Toyota has never offered a true heavy-duty pickup that would need an engine as large as the 7.3-liter Godzilla, the 5.7’s 381 hp and 401 lb-ft were — and still are — impressive numbers for a naturally aspirated V8 of its size. 

Of all the naturally aspirated V8 engines currently on the market, the one that comes closest to the Ford Godzilla in displacement, design, and output might be the 6.4-liter HEMI engine. Although this version of the HEMI isn’t currently available in as many vehicles as it once was, you can still find it under the hood of the Jeep Wrangler 392 and the Ram HD pickup.  

In the Ram HD, which competes directly against the Ford Super Duty, the more utilitarian version of the 6.4 HEMI makes 405 hp and 429 lb-ft of torque, both lower than the Godzilla. In the Jeep Wrangler 392, though, the 6.4 HEMI makes a more potent 470 hp and 470 lb of torque, outdoing the Godzilla by 40 horsepower but with 15 lb-ft less torque. 

Of course, you can find HEMI V8s that significantly outgun the Godzilla and both horsepower and torque — you’ll just need to add a supercharger and some Hellcat badges to do it. We shouldn’t bring Hellcats into this conversation, though, as Ford has its own supercharged V8s in offerings like the Raptor R and Mustang Dark Horse SC that go head-to-head with the Hellcat. That’s a comparison for a different time.

The Chevrolet LT6 V8 from the C8 Corvette Z06 is an engine that, beyond being a naturally aspirated American V8, could not be more different from the Ford Super Duty’s Godzilla 7.3. The Godzilla is a huge, pushrod V8 designed for pickup trucks, while the LT6 is a race-bred DOHC V8 with an exotic flat plate crankshaft designed to take on some of the world’s fastest supercars.

So in the real world, the groundbreaking LT6 powering a mid-engined American supercar should have no business being compared to a workhorse Ford pickup V8. And in terms of power, the LT6 absolutely destroys the Godzilla with its 670 hp, about 240 hp more than the Godzilla. But while the LT6’s 460 lb-ft of torque is absolutely incredible for a naturally aspirated, 5.5-liter engine, the Godzilla’s 485 pound-feet still gives it the win there.

In fact, the DOHC V8 in the Z06 actually has slightly less torque than the pushrod V8 in the base Corvette C8. Such is the nature of small-displacement, overhead cam V8s compared to larger pushrod engines. And as for comparing the exotic Chevy LT6 to the more blue-collar Ford 7.3, the fact that one can even mention these two engines in the same sentence shows just how strong and varied America’s current V8 offerings are. While there was a time when it seemed widespread engine downsizing could spell the end of the naturally aspirated V8, both the throwback Godzilla and all of these other options show that the V8 is alive and well.