New tools you've bought recently?

[scotts90ranger]

I can see it being useful for some hard to get to stuff like in dash and such, the latching flex head with the 1/4" square drive adapter it came with should be handy.

 

[rumblecloud]

This was a Father's day gift(s) from son-in-law:



I'm prepping to paint for the first time, so he hooked me up.

 

[rumblecloud]

Still prepping for the upcoming prime/paint project. Thought this wold come in handy:

$24 from HF. I added some extra padding over what it came with.

 

[oldgeek]

I'm leaning towards getting a cordless drill from Harbor Freight. Their brushless Hercules line come with a 5 year warranty, 3 years on the battery. I have some Ryobi which are about the same price. But looking into customer service, Ryobi does not have a good reputation. With Hercules, on the other hand, people have said if something like the battery goes bad, they bring it in the nearest store, they look up the receipt on their system, and then tell them to grab a new one off the shelf. That is a great selling point for me. Enough to switch brands.

 

[bobbywalter]

this thing feeding a 120 gallon tank.

i cant believe how quiet it is for what it does.

 

[scotts90ranger]

I'm leaning towards getting a cordless drill from Harbor Freight. Their brushless Hercules line come with a 5 year warranty, 3 years on the battery. I have some Ryobi which are about the same price. But looking into customer service, Ryobi does not have a good reputation. With Hercules, on the other hand, people have said if something like the battery goes bad, they bring it in the nearest store, they look up the receipt on their system, and then tell them to grab a new one off the shelf. That is a great selling point for me. Enough to switch brands.

I've had Bauer stuff for a number of years back when they were first starting with the two brands at HFT, pretty much a toss up but for what I've gotten into I have no regrets on the Bauer, some of the tools that are just on Hercules would be nice but not enough to get a different battery type... Ryobi is good too, none are priced too bad to even be worth feeling bad about things breaking, the battery prices are getting kinda dumb though...

 

[sgtsandman]

I'm leaning towards getting a cordless drill from Harbor Freight. Their brushless Hercules line come with a 5 year warranty, 3 years on the battery. I have some Ryobi which are about the same price. But looking into customer service, Ryobi does not have a good reputation. With Hercules, on the other hand, people have said if something like the battery goes bad, they bring it in the nearest store, they look up the receipt on their system, and then tell them to grab a new one off the shelf. That is a great selling point for me. Enough to switch brands.

More and more, I'm buying HF stuff. They tend to be just as reliable at a lower price most of the time. A lot of the name brand stuff comes from China anyway. So, why pay more just to support a name brand?

 

[Shran]

I am all Milwaukee and DeWalt with a couple exceptions - the Bauer hot glue gun is dope and easily modified to run off 20v DeWalt batteries, and I scored the Hercules straight die grinder for $30 from a pawn shop (and I think it works very well.) If I had nothing I would probably look real hard at Hercules but I'll never switch now.

I'm still using 18v DeWalt tools on a regular basis, I figured out how to rebuild the batteries for them so until I can no longer get C NiCAD batteries for that purpose, I'll keep using them until they all die. Some of them are almost 20 years old now so I probably have a lifetime supply...

 

[oldgeek]

I was so impressed by this long tool with a sharp point.

It leaves me in awl...

 

[bobbywalter]

your gonna poke your eye out kid

 

[oldgeek]

your gonna poke your eye out kid

I don't run with sharp tools in hand! I keep it down to a brisk trot...

 

[bobbywalter]

I don't run with sharp tools in hand! I keep it down to a brisk trot...

wise

 

[Shran]

My wife is going to kill me later today but I bought another trailer. I am going to use this one for hauling the portable welder around. I say she's going to kill me because I just bought another one two weeks ago for this exact purpose but it needed a bunch of work and has an obscure 1949-51 Dodge front axle under it. This one is WAY better, about the size I was shooting for, it's in great shape and is almost totally usable as-is. It does have a trailer house axle under it but I have an unlimited source of wheels & tires, and I'm not stuck with finding really oddball parts or custom making stuff. This one even has a title... the other two little ones I have do not... and I only paid $150 for it!!!

Might just cut up the other two little ones for scrap, they both need a bunch of work.

 

[Shran]

This is the other one I bought recently. I think it is a 4x11' trailer. It's actually really well built except the axle is just janky as hell. It took me forever to figure out that someone used the front axle out of a 49-51 Dodge B1 truck and welded the steering knuckles so that they don't turn. The axle is a problem because it uses wheels that are 5x5 bolt pattern, which I don't have spares for, and opposite threaded lug studs on each side, and some studs are missing. My plan was to remove all the brake parts since the hub can be separated from the drum, then redrill the hubs for 5x4.5 bolt pattern and use Ranger wheels. I got that 90% done on one side and will probably do it to the other as well but it makes me nervous that it'll eat a bearing or something and then I'll never find parts for it. I might just do a major rebuild and use a junk 28 spline 8.8 that I have laying around, relocating spring hangers and stuff might be a better use of my time.

I actually have another much smaller trailer that is set up about the same way axle-wise but they used a Chevy car front axle. That one at least has a common bolt pattern but the whole trailer is really poorly built. I'm kinda surprised how common this setup was, I have seen a couple others with welded solid steering axles lately and I had another one years ago that was a double axle, setup like that... one of my relatives built it but did such a bad job that I just scrapped it.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

This is the other one I bought recently. I think it is a 4x11' trailer. It's actually really well built except the axle is just janky as hell. It took me forever to figure out that someone used the front axle out of a 49-51 Dodge B1 truck and welded the steering knuckles so that they don't turn. The axle is a problem because it uses wheels that are 5x5 bolt pattern, which I don't have spares for, and opposite threaded lug studs on each side, and some studs are missing. My plan was to remove all the brake parts since the hub can be separated from the drum, then redrill the hubs for 5x4.5 bolt pattern and use Ranger wheels. I got that 90% done on one side and will probably do it to the other as well but it makes me nervous that it'll eat a bearing or something and then I'll never find parts for it. I might just do a major rebuild and use a junk 28 spline 8.8 that I have laying around, relocating spring hangers and stuff might be a better use of my time.

View attachment 130959

I actually have another much smaller trailer that is set up about the same way axle-wise but they used a Chevy car front axle. That one at least has a common bolt pattern but the whole trailer is really poorly built. I'm kinda surprised how common this setup was, I have seen a couple others with welded solid steering axles lately and I had another one years ago that was a double axle, setup like that... one of my relatives built it but did such a bad job that I just scrapped it.

That’s kinda crazy.

Dad bought a little trailer awhile back. It was a home built with a title and cheap because it needed work. I thought I could just weld a couple patches and be good but when I went to get started, I found the frame was junk. Apparently it was some sort of build your own trailer kit because it was a weird stepped box steel. It had a standard 3,500# trailer axle and good springs but some oddball bolt pattern.

Fortunately I had a set of 3,500# axle hubs with a 5x4.5 pattern. I couldn’t get that weird box steel locally and didn’t want box steel anyway. But I had a welder and ideas so I built a trailer out of 3” C-channel for the outer frame and to add a 1’ beaver tail to the end. Came out really nice. I wouldn’t be afraid to build another.