Harbor Freight Tools that don't suck

[Pixguy]

i wonder if that moon rover that China sent to the moon was made by harbor freight.... it never worked right and now has failed completely. probably no warranty either hehe

Maybe, unless they bought the extended warranty.

 

[daugen]

poor thing froze to death over the lunar night.
No coverage for freezing...to what about 200 below?

 

[newbury]

Just want to put in another vote for the red handled heat gun (430°-800° /570°-1160° Interval Heat Gun With LED Temperature Settings).

I've used it for about 8 hours now stripping vinyl wall paper. I like the cool down feature.

 

[BigE_]

I'm taking back my vote for the HF ultrasonic cleaner that goes on sale for $69.99 and then has a 25% off coupon on top of that. It worked great for the first three times. I let it sit for another year or so without using it. I plugged it in. The LEDs lit up for maybe 1 second, and then nothing. Won't turn on, won't click, and nothing looks fried inside. Both fuses are OK. All transistors check out OK. I suspect the digital controller. Anyway, caveat emptor on this one.

Oh, and yes, it had water in it when I plugged it in. I know you aren't supposed to turn them on without water in them. Plugging it in shouldn't matter, but better safe than sorry.

 

[daugen]

caveat emptor on this one.

bummer. Do you use that for anything other than jewelry?
I always wondered about cleaning a gunked up carb in one of them...

 

[BigE_]

caveat emptor on this one.

bummer. Do you use that for anything other than jewelry?
I always wondered about cleaning a gunked up carb in one of them...

I used it once for cleaning up a gunked up carb and it worked awesome for that. I used it for cleaning up some small parts, and it worked well for that. In reality, when it was working, it worked great. The only things I didn't like was that you could only set it for a few minutes cleaning at any point.

I'm debating whether I should reverse engineer the electronics and make my own switches, or just get a new one. The new one wouldn't be from HF. Reverse engineering the current one wouldn't be hard, but might not be worth the time, especially if it isn't the microcontroller that went bad.

 

[crazyal]

We use much larger ultrasonic cleaners at work with DI water. They do a great job cleaning parts. Maybe not greasy parts though, never tried it. I thought about getting one but I think I'm going to go with a traditional 40 gallon parts washer and use either kerosine or oil eater for cleaning parts.

 

[Mattc8832]

I have 2 small Harbor Frieght Trailers 40 x 48 models and they are pretty decent for what they are. I turned one into a Welder Generator combo trailer and the other I'm using the axles,wheels and tires for a towable backhoe project I'm doing. I also have a few air tools that are not bad also. Honestly I haven;t had many other items from Harbor Frieght to be very good.

 

[SPYDERLK]

It is not inverter type altho may meet your needs for very lo drain applications. I have bought 2 and returned both. They do not meet their specs. Measured figures
are:
1.5A ,,,,,,,,,110V ,,,,,,,,,165W
3A ,,,,,,,,,,,,109V ,,,,,,,,,327W
4A ,,,,,,,,,,,,110V ,,,,,,,,,440W
5A ,,,,,,,,,,,,104V ,,,,,,,,,520W
5.5A ,,,,,,,,,100V ,,,,,,,,,550W
6A ,,,,,,,,,,,,97V ,,,,,,,,,,,582W
6.5A ,,,,,,,,,96V ,,,,,,,,,,,624W
7A ,,,,,,,,,,,,95V ,,,,,,,,,,,665W
7.5A ,,,,,,,,,89V ,,,,,,,,,,,667W
8A ,,,,,,,,,,,,85V ,,,,,,,,,,,680W

In many situations this output charcteristic will be unusable above 500W
larry

I was hoping, based on comments on here, that the little 900w 2-cycle generator would be a "don't suck", but now having had one for 6 months, I'm not too sure! I have used non-ethanol, fresh fuel in it exclusively, but it is almost impossible to start. If I remove the air cleaner cover and drizzle in a bit of fuel, it kicks right off. I shut off the fuel valve and run the carb dry whenever I am done using it. It seems to run ok after it starts. Maybe a little lean. So I'm suspecting something wrong in the choke/low speed carb circuit, or it may be that the fuel on/off valve is so restricted that it takes a long time to slowly drizzle a bowl full. Guess it's going back for a trade-in on another.

- Jay

Its a suck if you need what it says it delivers. When it wont run its worse. One of mine failed in emergency due lack of spark. ... NOT sparkplug or kill switch. I have had and returned 3 of them, counting the 1st exchanged under extended warranty. It doesnt suck only if you dont need anywhere near its speced power and are lucky.
larry

 

[RoMad]

My wifes washing machine door hinge hasn't been working correctly so today I started taking it apart. The six screws holding the hinge on were extremely tight. I managed to get one loose and strip one on my first try. I went to harbor freight with my wife (she always wants to get the free stuff) and picked up an impact screw driver. At first it didn't work too well and then I cut straight slots in the screw heads with a dremel and switched from the phillips to straight bit. I was using a 2 lb. hammer and I hit it pretty hard. It loosened every one of them with just a few hard hits. When I got them out they had red loctite on them.
My wife had a coupon and I got the impact screw driver and a cheap looking volt meter for $5.50. If I never use it again it was worth it.
Impact Screwdriver Set with Case