The best part of Harbor Freight tools is you can afford 2, 1 for Neptune and 1 for the boat.
Because of the nature of my work I use HF
wrenches almost exclusively, unless I need a good quality thin-walled 6-point wrench then I need to dig into my Snap-On or Mac stuff. With HFT I actually don't care when I loose one.
I like their stubby wrenches and their regular wrenches. Their ratchet wrenches I can blow out in two - three uses..... Other than their impact sockets, actully not too bad, though a bit soft, and a few breaker bars (I have snapped about three of them but they replace them), I find their sockets pretty poor. Occasionally they do have some some okay quality thin walled 6-point sockets that are worth buying. Their 12 point sockets are pretty bad..
Their screw drivers are a joke, too soft & poor tip-shape & their drill kits are made of steel so soft they actually un-twist when you use them to drill anything but a peanut butter & jelly sandwich....
I find their electrical stuff to be pretty awful including such sillyness as
a made up die standard for the hydraulic lug crimp tool.... Their heat shrink crimps are borderline dangerous. I wanted to like their wire ties, I go through thousands, but they simply do not compare to a quality wire tie like a T&B.
I actually grabbed one of their 500A carbon pile load testers a few years ago and it burned up and let the smoke monster out in just the second test I ran. They refunded me completely so customer service can be decent. I DID NOT replace it. I only bought it so I did not need to carry my expensive one to customers boats. Their battery capacitance tester is another horrible joke and is 150% misleading.
I had a job where I needed to buff a boat on short notice and hired a local kid I know and grabbed a spare HFT buffer (a Makita knock off). My Makita has done thousands and thousands of linear feet of boat hull over about 17 or more years and is still going strong. The HFT Makita knock off burned itself up half way down the first side of the boat. HFT replaced it no questions asked but I lost my additional labor and it actually wound up costing me money. My bad decision, I know... D'oh...
I also own the HFT multi-tool and until you own or use a Fein Multi-Master you can't even fathom how bad it really is. Their multi-tool blades are also not worth the packaging they ship in, unless you plan to cut only balsa wood with them.
A few years ago I was missing a gasket for my vintage break bleeder, so I grabbed a HFT brake bleeder kit. Simple tool how can you mess that up right? Wrong..... I could not even get the brake job done before it failed. Spent two hours searching locally for an o-ring to fix my vintage break bleeder before I could finish the job. I have had that tool since I was 16 and it is still going strong, the HFT bleeder did not even last 15 minutes. HFT took it back no problem but it wasted a lot of my time.
Their step drills are actually okay quality but when I actually priced them out I realized can buy them from my nut & bolt distributor for less money and in a high quality product, so you need to be careful with their pricing. Their Phillips #2 tips for magnetic holders also are horrible quality also and I can snap them before a stainless screw snaps.....
I even bought a trailer tongue jack, and figured
how bad can it be? I installed on my work boat trailer in April 2017, to replace the 16 year old tongue jack that still actually worked. Just four days ago discovered the jack is totally frozen and already does not work. Junk....
Some stuff at HFT is a good value other stuff is a complete joke. Unfortunately until you buy it and kill it you don't know what's good or bad. I still get suckered in from time to time but these days I have a few simple rules with HFT.
If it plugs in or uses batteries = fagedaboutit
If it has to do with electrical or electricity = fagedaboutit
If it needs to cut, grind or drill = fagedaboutit
If it is pneumatic & powered by air = fagedaboutit
If it has no moving parts = probably worth a try if the price is right
Sadly Home Depot/Husky, Lowes/Porter Cable, Craftsman and far to many others have now followed HFT into the drain hole of low price = low quality so HFT is now
almost on-par with other brands that are now just riding on their name and also selling
pretty low budget junk.
Sadly there really no more "mid quality" tool brands (eg: Craftsman) just Snap-On, MAC & Matco and then the
rest of them......