Maybe I should not share this with the group. I recently purchased a bead blast cabinet from Harbor Freight. On sale at $220 it is a good quality product for the price. I bought a plastic cabinet from Harbor Freight some years back and it has never worked very well. The feed is inconsistent and the gun has a steel nozzle. The new cabinet works great. The pick up design is much improved. Needing different media I decided to upgrade the old cabinet to the new style feed. Looking at the pick up tube it looked easy enough to fabricate.

However, before going to the trouble I called Harbor Freight to price the replacement parts for the new cabinet. Generally as we have learned from the 928 replacement parts can cost sometimes more than the car. In this case I got a pick up tube, a new gun and ceramic nozzles for under $20 including shipping. All the replacement guns I looked at on line ranged from $30 to $100. If one wants to build there own cabinet Harbor Freight is a good place to start for the key components.

The second thing I managed to find is a 17 mm allen socket that fits the transmission drain plug on the old style transmissions. The complete set was about $8. The best I found on a special VW / Porsche socket was around $25. The allen socket set is very good quality to boot.

 

Harbor freight is a great source for non-pro's! I have a lot of NON precision type tools from there.

 

Dan,
Have you used other SB cabinets? If so, how does this one compare. I've been waiting on a deal on a used larger cabinet, but I've also been tempted to just drive down to HF to pick up this one.

 

Google will turn up some good HF threads on the blast cabinet and various mods to improve it, seal it up etc. You will need a lot of dry air.

Since we are talking HF, the new Earthquake air tools are getting very high reviews. What looks very tempting to me are the new larger air ratchets, 3/8 and 1/2 are both impact drive with no recoil. So far no sale prices on the new Earthquake, just the 20% off coupon, but when it happens I think I am all over a 3/8.

 

I have a nice 3/8" impact gun with no recoil and handle-base exhaust (much quieter than usual rear vent). Its awesome - I use it more than the 1/2" (the 1/2" is used pretty much for suspension and crank bolt only).

The only thing to be wary of is the number of reverse torque selections - too many impact guns have more tighten speeds than reverse speeds - which is useless if like me you only ever use them to undo bolts.

 

The blast cabinet was on sale for $219. The guy gave me some kind of discount to $175. Not sure why. It was easy to assemble other than dropping it on my foot once - but my foot these days seem to be a magnet. The book says to use two people for assembly.

I bought 44Lb of black aluminum oxide to go with the cabinet - also on sale. I have two compressors - a five HP and a 3 HP. The head gasket is blown in the 5 HP so I am reduced to the 3HP unit. The small compressor handles the blaster with no problem. The manual recommends 90+ lbs. pressure but I have been running at much lower pressures with no reduction in effiency. I even run down the compress after turning it off with the blaster and it still puts out media until the end. With the Aluminum Oxide it takes off rust and paint effortlessly. In fact I could not be more pleased with the way the unit works. The quality of the cabinet is excellent.

I have the old cabinet and the new parts arrived today. I will be putting the new pick up and gun with the old cabinet and using it with glass beads. The alunimum oxide is a little rough so I am hoping the glass beads will give a smoother finish.

When I had a shop I bought a bead blaster out of Oregon. It worked great for blasting VW pistons and other stuff. It was a long time ago but it seems the HF cabinet works better. I had tought of building one at the time - even went and got an old washing machine - but in the end I found it better just to buy one. With the amount of metal in the HF unit it would be impossible to buy the materials for the cost of the unit. I also looked for used units but they tend to be asking more than a new one at HF and then there is shipping involved.

As with any cabinet though you do need to use a clearing system. I hooked up an old shop vacuum someone abandoned on me. It does a great job of clearing the dust at the expense of a lot of noise. Once the grit manges to burn out the motor I will buy a professional clearing system.

I will let you know if $20 in parts fixes the problem with the old cabinet. The right tools do make a huge difference in getting the job done vs. just wasting time

 

I made a cyclonic dust collector for my glass bead cabinet that sites between the cabinet exhaust and the vacuum source - after some reading on the interwebs. It works very well - after 20 hours of blasting there was no appreciable amount of dust in the shop vac's canister/filter, and a couple of inches of black powder in the collector for the cyclone.

I use a dedicated dust collector for the blast cabinet, which is vented to outside - you really don't want to risk breathing any silicone fines from broken beads. I'm paranoid enough about it that I still wear a proper fines mask with canisters on it when using the cabinet, despite having siliconed the cabinet joins and using an outside-vented dust collector.

I do occaisionally wish for an oxide cabinet too - but don't have the space, although next time I'm stripping cam covers I might actually bother to swap media to remove the factory coat.

For info on the cyclonic collectors - see these:
DIY - http://lumberjocks.com/SimonSKL/blog/10097
Pre-made - Dust deputy

I went the DIY route as there was no local equivalent and shipping was insane. For the cone just bought a 3ft traffic cone from my local Home Depot equivalent rather than trying to make one in aluminum.

 

Excellent air cyclone site....good design information. You can remove over +98% of the blasted material and grit right away from the air stream.

 

I've got the 3/8 and 1/2 impact wrenches, but this is an air "ratchet" with impact drive like the much larger and much more expensive Hammerhead from IR.

http://www.harborfreight.com/38-impa...nch-68426.html
http://www.ingersollrandproducts.com...px-am_en-36494
.

 

I have an old CP half inch impact. It i marginal. I bought a 3/4 impact wrench from Harbor Freight. It worked the first time I used it. Broke the nut clear away. After that it has been no better than the CP. I also use the impact wrench only for braking things free. Any suggestions on one that really works? Is there a tune up that can be done to air impact wrenches?

I also have a 3/8 air ratchet. It sounds like a good idea but I never use it. it is also a CP I think. The one I do use for things like removing is a 3/8 driver with the butter fly handle. With extensions it is great at getting at those 8 mm nuts on the bumper cover.

I upgraded the old blast cabinet today with the parts from Harbor Freight. It now works as well as the new one. One for aluminum oxide and one for glass beads.

 

For those who aren't (yet) members of the Garage Journal forum, there's a very long-running thread that rates H-F tools on a pass-fail basis. Loose rule is that critiques shold include the part number, so you can search through the many hundreds of posts quickly to see if there's a rating yet on the piece you might be considering.

Try http://garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27192 No personal interest in GJ stock or anything, just another interesting site with helpful info.

 

Dan--

That 3/4 impact needs BIG air lines and full pressure to do much good. It's not a bad idea to flush and lubricate the hammers once in a while, especially if you don't have a very good air drier on your compressor. A little moisture mixes with the oil in the impact hammers, and turns it to gum. WD-40 is convenient for the flush part, tube into the air inlet with the trigger pulled. Follow with low-pressure air to spin the wrench slowly. Repeat a few times until the oil from the exhaust is clean. Then add new oil through the inlet, same process. Same recommendation applies to almost any air tool, including the ratchets/drills/die grinders/etc that have sliding-vane air motors in them.

 

Dr Bob,

Thanks for the tip. I will give it a try. I generally use mystery oil for the tools, but I must admit to be remiss in oiling every time. I had a DA that clogged up shortly after buying it new. Cleaning fixed it. No one has perfect air, but I do have good flow - 3/4 lines from the compressor and can ger 115 lbs pretty easily.