Changing a wheel cheaply - big breaker bar vs cordless impact wrench?

Craftsman is pretty decent stuff too, their old tool boxes, like from the 80s, were pretty decent too. The cheapo Chinese stuff is for when you have to cut them up to make a custom with a K tool.

 

Basic hand tools its all the same IMO. Some of the specialty stuff I buy off the truck now and then (pullers, extractors etc).

I spend the money for air tools though. Cheap ones never last and never perform well. My little 1/2" Mac air impact is pushing 1,250 ft-lbs. Smoked my older 3/4" IR into the dirt lol. Takes wheels off like nothing.

 

Most of the time nobody around here has anything special on hand, or we're not spending a couple hundred bucks on something we can make and tell ourselves its just as good, so we make something out of some scrap laying around.

 

They're kind of like the Rolex of the tool world. Rolex makes the nicest $1500 diver's watch you'll ever see that they somehow manage to charge $7500 for.

 

I know its not rocket science but if the A/C needs serviced it goes to the shop. Never saw the point in buying the special stuff needed to do that one.

 

Oh don't get me wrong, they all look like scrap metal some hillbilly welded or bolted together and called a tool. The only welder we have here is a little 110 Miller wannabe.

 

Nothing real special required for that, just a set of gauges and a keg of freon, a vacuum pump if you want to get fancy.