junk items from harbor freight

Not a fan of The Harbor Freight Scam/Store. But I must admit I purchased a pair of safety wire twist pliers and us them for over three years almost everyday. (I am an aircraft mechanic) they finally broke but I sure got my $15.99 out of them, I have since used up tow pairs from Snap On but when they stop working they are always warranty!!

Didn't much care for the electric impact wrench.

impact driver...broke with the first wack.



i have the safty wire pliers and the rivet gun...both work for me.

I have the HF safety wire plies and used them to wire the grips on my three bikes. The pliers worked OK but the wire itself is absolute shyte.

My worse HF buy - the welder stand. There's nothing good about a $3000 welding setup on a $40 stand held together with bolts made of recycled tin foil.

LOL, something about having a 3000$ welder tells me you probably shouldn't buy a stand? Or at the very least you should buy the factory sold matched stand to that welder.

HF stand is deserving of an HF welder on it.

Personally my welding "stand" is one of those chrome wire rack carts sold by sams club, Future plans are to get another one and put a steel top between the two for a rolling welding table.

Electric chainsaw. Lasted 15 minutes. Found a cheaper one at Lowes that works fine.

I know it's shameful. I just needed it to get the welder off the ground to weld up an exhaust and build a rack for one of my bikes before a road trip.

i figure a $3000 welder could make a pretty nice stand for a $3000 welder.

yeah, that seems to point out one of the rubs about HF. In any given stack of tools, you might get one that's fine (like my and your safety wire pliers), or you might get one that's a POS. I think if you can have a look at the specific item you're going to buy and actually try that EXACT piece out (instead of a similar cousin) you may increase your chances. But there's definitely a crap shoot element to the whole process.

I was looking at one of the HF tire machines and I swear I could have bent it in two with my bare hands so I passed.

I was gifted one of these:
http://www.harborfreight.com/high-speed-metal-saw-113.html
I think it'll be good for close-in cutting, but it doesn't come with a blade, and more importantly, the local store doesn't stock any blades (fine or coarse) for it, and they said that the warehouse didn't have any either! :huh

They are listed online here:
http://www.harborfreight.com/pack-of-5-coarse-air-saw-replacement-blades-36887.html
5 for $8.

Anybody have one of these? I'd like to know if it's worthwhile chasing blades for it, or return it for 2 boxes of nitrile gloves!

Went in for a 100ct box of nitrile gloves, and bought a pair of these on impulse yesterday:

Had em out of the package for five seconds, put em right back in with the return reciept.
It doesn't matter how little they cost, if you work with sheetmetal, they'd ruin anything they touched..

AMEN.

Even the stands that Miller puts their label on are extremely cheesy. Less metal than the HF version (but better bolts, at least).

I have a handy reference of junk items from them:

bought 5 years ago for $20....and it just won't die. I picked it up so I wouldn't have to swap wheels out between cutting & grinding. It has been thoughly abused, I even put a diamond coated blade on it and cut though stucco. The dust should have killed it, but it lives on . The bearings are getting a little sloppy but it refuses to die.

With that said, everything else I've bought from HF failed consistently with it's low price point.

I thought, "Hey, two pairs of m/c tie-downs for about a buck two ninety eight. Good deal!" So I gave a pair to a buddy who just bought a bike and doesn't have shit yet. We go to use them....OMG what utter shite they are. If you try to use the ratchet to tighten even a little bit the thing twists and goes into Safe Mode. Plus they're way too long. I ended up giving him my good pair of tie-downs, the simple kind with the one-way clasp you just pull tight.

Curiously, HF also has the one-way clasp kind which I bought last week and they work great. But the ratcheting kind...just don't go there, my friends.

I don't trust any tie-downs except my old 70's-era Ancras or the Canadian-made Victory branded cam-type. The webbing is about twice as thick as HF stuff, and the cam buckles are thicker and more positive in operation as well. Out of the 4 HF cam-type tie-downs I have, one holds well and the other three all slip in varying degrees, so I only use them to hold brush on my utility trailer in my yard, giving them a knot after tightening them.

I don't like anybody's ratchet style - they ALWAYS twist on me which leads to frustration and bad language.

Some of the stuff we inherited when my mother in law died included a box

of tools. Amongst the items was a cast iron HF C-Clamp. It looked as if it had never

been used. I tried to clamp a piece of metal to my work bench and one of the

arms snapped with almost no resistance. It hard a large air pocket in the casting.

:huh

HF=crap

the tools itself works. the blades they sell are junk. which renders the tool kinda useless. i've found 'most' of the hf airtool stuff works ok, although i wouldn't touch their compressors..

Small torque wrench - impossibly miscalibrated on first use.