Rate the Harbor Freight Tools Thread- Pass or Fail?

[AlFiallos]

I have a used 7x14 HF metal lathe I bought from a second hand store for 85 bucks.
Do I like the lathe,, not at all.

On hobby sites and YouTube, I saw a lot of people who bought the 7x14 and 7x12 HF metal lathes the majority of them said that they needed a lot of tuning to get them to work they way they wanted. My 8x12 came ready to work out of the box. I bought the lathe to replace broken axels for my brother-in-law's power chair.

 

[C-Bag]

I usually do a lot of looking on different sites comparing prices and reviews. And these three at HF were highly rated. The three gallon 3hp vac:

3 Gallon, 3 Peak HP Wet/Dry Vacuum

Amazing deals on this 3Gal Wet/Dry Shop Vacuum at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

the little vac was 92% 5star rated and only $40. My 20gal shopvac I’ve had for 30yrs is built into a cart w/cyclone for my powder coat so it’s great for that but sux for cleaning off machines and doing the cars. This thing rocks. Only thing it didn’t come with any attachments and I had to go elsewhere to get them.

The 6” short throw electric DA polisher/sander:

5.7 Amp 6 in. Short-Throw Random Orbit DA Polisher/Sander

Amazing deals on this 8Mm Random Orbit 6In Da Polisher/Sander at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

my wife’s car spends its days in a dirt lot at her work and the hood and the top look like they have been sand blasted and were dark with something like sap. This polisher had 92% 5stars and great reviews. Even though I had never machine polished a car before and after checking YouTube and seeing I did it wrong it still did an incredible job on the car hood. $70. Armed with different pads and how to do what I’m doing I’m ready to redo the hood and then tackle the top. I decided to go this route because I also wanted a DA sander but didn’t want a pneumatic.

18ga metal shears.

3.5 Amp, 18 gauge Metal Shears

Amazing deals on this 3.5Amp, 18 Gauge Metal Shears at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

i had been in a couple of local HF’s and couldn’t find this. It seems it was out of stock or close out and as usual that’s when I finally decide to jump. This has been on my radar because it can do what my throatless shear and scissor shears can’t. This is also over 90% 5stars. I decided I had to get some help and it took two employees almost 10min to find. On a bottom shelf in an odd place. I made a couple of cuts on 18ga galvanized and it went right through it easily. After looking for several months for a Makita or a Bosch that were both in the $100-$350 range I decided to see if this style of shear is what I need. $40, can’t really go wrong.

 

[hman]

The Bauer shop vac claims "3 peak HP," but it draws only 8 amps at 120 volts (or 960 watts). That's about what what a 1 1/3HP motor would draw (at 730 watts per horsepower). So the "peak" hp rating looks just a bit bogus to me. I do appreciate your endorsement anyway.

PS ... how noisy is it? In my experience, shop vacs tend to be obnoxious screamers.

 

[C-Bag]

To be fair, there’s no vac that is rated in real hp. It’s not screamer like our new Dyson house vac, that things stupid loud. There are jets that are quieter. The little Bauer sucks stuff up good, is easy to maneuver and doesn’t deafen.

 

[AlFiallos]

The Bauer shop vac claims "3 peak HP," but it draws only 8 amps at 120 volts (or 960 watts). That's just a bit below what a 2HP motor would draw. So the "peak" hp rating looks just a bit bogus to me. I do appreciate your endorsement anyway.

PS ... how noisy is it? In my experience, shop vacs tend to be obnoxious screamers.

Vacuum cleaners can be very deceptive. Vacuum cleaners horsepower is: Air watts are calculated using the formula, (Air Flow (in CFM) x Vacuum (in inches of water lift))/8.5 = Air Watts. Once again, there is some question as to whether this is a useful specification or just a new rating to further confuse consumers and make comparisons difficult.

 

[Larry$]

There has always been a a lot of BS marketing using HP ratings. There is a way to claim more HP than a motor can continuously produce, sometimes called "instantaneous" HP. What a motor can produce for a very short time before it overheats and dies. Sears Craftsman was famous for that deceptive advertising of their power tools.

 

[matthewsx]

There has always been a a lot of BS marketing using HP ratings. There is a way to claim more HP than a motor can continuously produce, sometimes called "instantaneous" HP. What a motor can produce for a very short time before it overheats and dies. Sears Craftsman was famous for that deceptive advertising of their power tools.

I miss the old days when car manufacturers would underrate their engines HP to fool the NHRA….

 

[Flyinfool]

Continuous HP and peak HP can be very different.
Where I work we have a motor in a machine that pulls 8 amps at 120VAC continuous, That is 960 watts or 1.3 hp of power in. that motor has a measured HP of 1.0 at the output shaft. There is no such thing as a 100% efficient motor, you will always get less out than you put in. The design of the machine has the motor starting against a near full load and it will draw an instantaneous peak of around 80 amps. (A 15A circuit breaker has enough delay to not trip with this spike.) There are unscrupulous manufactures that would rate this as a 13 peak hp motor. We call it a 3/4 HP in the literature.

 

[Jake M]

The Bauer shop vac claims "3 peak HP," but it draws only 8 amps at 120 volts (or 960 watts). That's about what what a 1 1/3HP motor would draw (at 730 watts per horsepower). So the "peak" hp rating looks just a bit bogus to me.

I don't know if it's the "official" way of rating a vacuum cleaner or not, and I certainly have not had the opportunity to test EVERY brand, but I've found that you're never off by much if you figure that horsepower means horsepower, and Peak Horsepower means inrush amps times math to convert it to horsepower. Shop vac types should have had your eyebrows raised since the eighties anyhow. with 3, 4, 5, 6, and more peak horsepower electric motors that are no bigger than your fist and are UL listed to run on a 15 amp plug without burning your house down.

As time goes on, the actual power of the vacuums (in my experience) goes down as times move forward. Turns out it's cheaper to install a lesser grade motor, that's hurting for torque during the startup, thereby increasing the startup inrush. Who knew. And bonus, the "peak horsepower" goes through the roof the ads sound better, yet on top of the motor savings, they can still pull off a smaller gauge of copper in the cord and still get a proper safety listing from one of the recognized agencies...

Household vacs are not "that" bad..... They're kind of a whole different animal in what it takes them to get started and running, But if you see peak horsepower listed on one, it seems to follow. As was mentioned though, they're more typically using their own version of the new math to rate how spectacularly wonderful all of the new ones are.

 

[NH Hunter]

I have had the 36" (I believe) sheet metal break for about 15 years. No complaints as it does what it's advertised for. Pass
The corded 1/2" impact gun does well - got it to drive some 8" lag bolts in a shed I built. Pass
Electric Sheet metal shear - pass.
Hand tools - mostly a pass.
Lot's of casters. = pass.
folding welding table -= big pass.

I'm just a tinkerer and handyman around the house or for my kids houses, and have not had many problems with harbor freight stuff. The only thing I've had fail from Harbor Freight, that I recall, was a vice, and I'm not sure that was the vice's fault. My son used it as a press, instead of my press, and broke the casting.

Just like anything else, buy for your purpose and check it out in the store before you buy.