In spite of my father's admonition, many years ago I did buy a few cheap
tools, thinking as David Robie does that I wasn't going to use them
frequently. I soon discovered a few things about them.
1. They never work as well as good tools, even when new. Things don't fit
right. They don't have the power they should. They're not sharp or smooth
or even as they should be. They don't fit the hand well. They make the
work harder than it needs to be.
2. Even if you think you'll use the tool just a few times, a few years later
you often discover that you've used it *more* than a few times. You realize
this when you're in a hurry and the d**m thing breaks or quits.
3. Don't even bother trying to fix it. Spare parts aren't available.
In the last post, I alluded to a cheap strut spring compressor. Here's the
story.
Many years ago I ordered some strut cartridges for my VW from Recycled Bugs
Inc. (remember them?). I was planning to rent a spring compressor, but the
order taker sold me a cheap one, saying it wasn't top quality, but was "good
enough to use every 5 years."
As soon as I opened the box, I knew I'd made a mistake. It was cheap
Chinese junk. They were grainy cast metal. But I was trying to change the
struts, it was late on Saturday, and I didn't want to try to find a rental
shop still open (this was before the chain auto parts companies started
renting tools). So I tried them anyway.
I got the spring on one strut compressed, all right, and got the new
cartridge installed. Then I went to loosen the compressors, and found that
one of the castings had cross-threaded. It was seized up. Couldn't loosen
it to finish the job.
For a while I thought I was going to have to cut it off, and was trying to
figure out how to do that without releasing the spring and killing myself.
I had about decided I'd have to wait until Monday, borrowing a car to get to
work. I'd rent a *real* spring compressor to release the tension, and just
remove the cr***y one and dump it in the trash can.
Fortunately, I was able to free it up by dousing it with penetrating oil,
chucking it in the vise, and applying a piece of pipe on my breaker bar. In
retrospect I'm lucky it didn't break, sending bits flying everywhere.
I rebuilt the other strut the following weekend, and rented a proper spring
compressor for it. Lesson learned. Never again have I bought a cheap tool.
And come to that I don't think I ever bought anything from RBI again,
either.
To bring this back round to the ET : many of us are still using 30 year old
tractors because they were built well. That's one reason we like them, or
at least one reason I do - they're not cheap disposable tractors like the
ones sold at the home stores. ETs' price tags weren't small when new, but
they're quite affordable now.
Just as a 30 year old ET is likely to outlast your neighbor's new Toro from
Home Depot, a good used hand or power tool (bought from Ebay if necessary)
is usually a better deal than a new cheapie purchased from HF.
David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
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