Harbor Freight Tools that don't suck

[KubotainNH]

12 Ton Hydraulic Gear Puller

This three jaw gear puller with a little added heat pulled the remaining part from the bottom side splined gear box after the huge disc with the two blades broke free on a stump. It weighs about 25 pounds and got the job done. The disc and attached blades must weigh around 200+ pounds.

That's kinda cool, I've never seen a hydraulic one. A pneumatic one would be neat too.

 

[Howling]

That's kinda cool, I've never seen a hydraulic one. A pneumatic one would be neat too.

Pneumatic version would be scary. With hydraulic when piece breaks free it will stop and sit there. With pneumatic when piece breaks free the compressed air push to end of stroke launching the puller and piece.

 

[PhysAssist]

Pneumatic version would be scary. With hydraulic when piece breaks free it will stop and sit there. With pneumatic when piece breaks free the compressed air push to end of stroke launching the puller and piece.

When I had my F-150, and needed to pull my front disks, my B-I-L brought home a really big screw-thread operated gear puller that they use in the BIG printing shop he works at.

They apparently use them to remove some of the really huge printing drums, paper rolls, etc.

We tightened it down, heated the disk with his acetylene torch, banged on it with a 3 or 4# drilling hammer, rinse, repeat, etc, for a couple of hours, then closed the garage and went in for Thanksgiving dinner.

Good thing to, because while we were eating we heard a HUGE BOOM in the garage, and went out to find the disk and puller [prolly about 50-60# of heavy steel] sitting about 4-5 feet away, and most of the way through his solid oak man-door.

The trajectory went straight through just about where we had to have been standing to do the heating and beating.

Maybe needless to say that we were significantly less laissez-faire about where we worked from, and the amount of pressure we were applying on the the other side...

 

[KubotainNH]

Pneumatic version would be scary. With hydraulic when piece breaks free it will stop and sit there. With pneumatic when piece breaks free the compressed air push to end of stroke launching the puller and piece.

As mentioned by PhysAssist, any of them can launch parts. I was thinking pneumatic similar to adding that sort of jack to a press. Does it launch to end of stroke if something breaks free on a press? I realize it's not quite the same.

 

[California]

Another dont-suck that I use from time to time, the dogbone wrenches:

I keep one each SAE and Metric in the drawer below the shop vise.
It's handy to clamp something in the vise then use these to disassemble it, much faster than going to get the proper box-end wrench or socket set from across the shop.

Recommended.

 

[IslandTractor]

Another dont-suck that I use from time to time, the dogbone wrenches:

I keep one each SAE and Metric in the drawer below the shop vise.
It's handy to clamp something in the vise then use these to disassemble it, much faster than going to get the proper box-end wrench or socket set from across the shop.

Recommended.

I have one of each too. I don't use them much but I find them useful when I need to crawl under the tractor without knowing exactly what wrenches to bring with me. Not so useful in really tight spaces as they are bulky, don't ratchet and cannot be flipped to get a different grip angle but still deserves a spot in the "don't suck" tool pantheon.

 

[KubotainNH]

I have a stubby wrench set like the one below. The set I have has all the wrenches in a neat little holder. Great to take with you for small jobs where you don't know the size of the wrench. Seems to be a quality set, I really like them and hard to beat the price.

12 Piece Stubby Combination Wrench Set

 

[Gale Hawkins]

When rebuilding the heavy 40 year old bush hog after we used the 12 ton hydraulic gear puller and had to add some heat we were concerned the old oil seal on the bottom should be replaced. The four bolts that held the oil seal in place were frozen tight so we broke out the new HF 1/2" electric impact wrench ($40). It was a hard task but it backed out three of them. I then tried to tighten the frozen one and rusty dust flew then I was able to back it out. We also used it to back off the 8 nuts so we could break apart the slip clutch plates and wire brush the steel plates and fiber friction rings.

Electric Impact Wrench - 1/2"

It seems to be $10 off much of the time and I would rate it a buy based on our first to uses of it this week. It is heavy but it saved us a ton of time as did the 12 ton 3 jaw gear puller that cost me $80 due to 20% off coupon.

HF is awesome for the farm shops that may never do the same job twice. I am hoping the 40 year old bush hog is good for another 40 years.

I did run the bush hog for two hours late yesterday with the new 90 weight gear oil and the gear box stayed relative cool and the rear wheel rolls well with the new bearings vs the missing bearings.

 

[PhysAssist]

As mentioned by PhysAssist, any of them can launch parts. I was thinking pneumatic similar to adding that sort of jack to a press. Does it launch to end of stroke if something breaks free on a press? I realize it's not quite the same.

I think most of the air-jacks people add to the presses are air-over [driven] hydraulics, so hopefully that mitigates the launching behaviors.

 

[aeblank]

Electric Impact Wrench - 1/2"

X2. My IR air impact can't loosen lugnuts off 2 (of 3) of my cars. The electric is 2 for 2 so far. The last one is torqued to 140 though.