u/mx5plus2cones

In case anyone is interested, here is a comparison between the Harbor Freight Pittsburgh ball joint separator and the one from gear wrench.

$5 separate the two...

Gearwrench is $27 on Amazon

Pittsburgh is $22 at HarborFreight.

I had the Pittsburgh one for 6 years.

Overall, the Pittsburgh is decent tool.

The nice thing about the Pittsburgh version is the thinner head . The Gearwrench is slightly thicker.

But what makes the Gearwrench better is the adjustment bolt..

The Pittsburgh one is thinner and more proned to binding , and in my extreme case the threads are stripped.

On the Gearwrench the adjustment bolt is bigger and less prone to binding. And Gearwrench is lifetime warrantied.

For $5 difference, well worth the Gearwrench.

Finished replacing all the bushings and ball joints to the front suspension of my NA miata.

Snap wring pliers are great!

Great.... Should have counted everything after opening the sealed bag....

Well, at least Amazon is sending me a replacement kit and told me to keep the old kit.

But what am I going to do with an extra kit that only has 19 pieces after I use 1 of them?

​

A lot of you folks told me that if there is 1 thing you absolutely need to get with the SEP student discount, get BJP1 , since it is well worth the money...

I didnt listen...and now redoing my bushings and ball joints on the miata.... I so wished I had listened.

Using these loaners from OEM Tools just absolutely suck donkey butt.

If you have SEP. Just get BJP1. I borrowed my friends (not pictured). Just better.

It's a no brainer with the discount.

....so that's why i get more tickets in the miatas versus the mac....

Handed my 2013 mazda 6 2.5 petrol in for a wheel bearing, got it back, horrible noise from the breaks. Drove it for like 10 min and took it back to the shop and saw that the pads were the wrong way around and that there were some pretty bad marks on the disks.

Mechanic turned the pads back again but says they don't need replacing, and that the disk is only cosmetically damaged, similar to what a rock would do.

Do i need new disks?

Edit: thanks to everyone who have replied, i've reached out to a friend who's a mechanic and he will take a look at it.

A lot of people are claiming i did this myself, but this was 570USD for a wheel bearing at one of the "better" dealers in town.

Redoing the front suspensionL new polyurathane bushings on control arms, new ball joints, new tie rods, etc

The control arms aren't too bad with rust (it's SoCal, rarely rains), but since I had them off, I figured I'd clean them up a bit, hitting the rust spots with rust inhibitor, shoot ingepoxy primer over the parts of exposed bare metal, shooting catalyzed sealer on the entire control arms, and applying a thin coat of 3M rubberized undercoating on them. A few folks on miata.net did this awhile ago, so I just ripped of the idea from them...

3M rubberized undercoating isn't too expensive and it's pretty durable, 1 16oz can more than enough for the 4 front control arms. $8 at JBTools or $10 from amazon or $13 from Oreilly Autoparts. SEM also has a good one at considerably more

https://www.jbtools.com/3m-03584-professional-grade-rubberized-undercoating-16-oz/

There's a few spots I missed, mainly because I was to lazy to get out stands to properly hold these things, so some of the missing coating was from leaning the pieces on the carcboard box. But hey, since this really isn't going to be seen, I'm just going to do a little followup touchup on the areas that I missed .

Yes, the Black Widow spray gun is a good gun, and it's not your typical $10 pink throwaway gun. So treat it with respect and take care of it, and it will take care of you.

In doing redoing the control arm bushing to my miata, I decided to remove whatever surface rust there was, seal the bare metal with epoxy primer, and shoot sealer, with eventual black and clearcoat. tomorrow maybe. In case this is the first time some of you are using an HVLP/HTE spray gun, just a warning... you want to clean the gun as soon as you can, ESPECIALLY if you used catalyzed primer, sealer, and/or clearcoat. If that 2 part catalyzed paint product dries inside your gun, chances are you can kiss that spraygun goodbye. Solvent cleans 2 part paint when it's still wet. It does a real shitty job after it hardened.

First thing is, do yourself a favor and buy a gun cleaning kit. It's around $15 on amazon, and the brushes are well worth it. Always use a nylon brush. Never use a wire brush. And if you clean the gun right after use, you shouldn't need the pins that come with the kit to unclog nozzle and holes on the air cap.

https://www.amazon.com/CANOPUS-Professional-Cleaning-Complete-Airbrush/dp/B074WKRS32

Also buy yourself a chemical resistent squeeze bottle and fill it halfway with painter solvent/cleaner

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B085LT9TQP

1. Remove paint cup and use it to catch solvent you use to clean spray gun.
2. Fill spray gun with solvent, swirl it around a bit
3. Get nylon brush from spray gun cleaning git and lightly twist and scrub the side of the filler neck
4. Remove air cap, and use squirt bottle to push fluid through every hole in front of the cap and on the air horns. squirt cleaner black to front and front to back...

Don't fucking drop the air cap on the ground or you will be sorry.

5. Remove the top knob holding the needle. Careful, there is a spring behind it. Don't lose the knob and the spring.

6. Pull the needle out. Get a cleaning cloth with solvent/cleaner and wipe the needle.
   Set it aside and make sure it doesn't roll off the table or something.

Don't fucking drop the needle on the ground or you will be very very sorry.

7. Use the wrench tool included with the gun to remove the nozzle (counter clockwise). You didn't lose the wrench, right? If you did, make sure you find a 6 point wrench only. DO NOT use a locking plier to take off the nozzle.

8. On the black widow gun, once you remove the nozzle, there is a black plastic piece on the gun that can come out. Here's a picture of how it should be. If it falls out, just put it back like this. You don't need to clean anything on the gun side/black plastic side.

9. Take you squirt bottle and shoot fluid through the nozzle from back to front.

Don't fucking drop the nozzle on the floor or you will be sorry.

10. Reassemble: nozzle, use wrench to make it firm tight but don't go gorilla tight or you will have a tough time taking it apart next time.

11. Insert needle, make sure you light it up to the trigger before pushing it through to the nozzle. Shouldnt take that much force.

12. Add knob spring, put on air cap.

13. Fill gun with fluid pull trigger and make sure fluid comes out of the nozzle.

Store manager at the local Home Depot ended up offering to refund my money of swap out the ratchet only that was sparking, despite being over 90 fays. She was a bit surprised that Milwaukee didnt send me a new one and tried to repair it, given it was only 4 months old and even more shocked it was sparking that way despite being brushless.

I thought about returning it, because I am concerned about how future warranty work would be on this.

But I am stupid and really like this thing when it is working... so...

Truthfully, it did leave a really bad taste in my mouth.

Glad Home Depot came through.

Anyway, back to wrench.

Peace everyone.

​

This is very fucked up. Not only did the service center not fix the original problem they also managed to totally gash up the next of my insider. I know these arent meant to be pretty, but come on now, this was 4 months old, and it looks like someone took a vice grip to the neck or something?

Holy shit.

Not happy.

​

I am a mad at myself for stripping the thread on my maddox ball joint separator, especially after I warned others dont go crazy on it with an impact wrench. But I was in a hurry...damn I had it for several years. I wish there was a replacement bolt.

Anyway, spent a few hours taking apart the driver side suspension. Lots of harbor freight helper tools, but the pittsburgh 27mm impact socket took the brunt of the abuse this evening.

Both control arms with all bushings and ball joints removed, ready for anti-rust coating /painting tomorrow and reinstall of polyurethane bushings from Energy suspension. Thinking I will do a obnoxious red color.

Cleanup also took about 1/2 hour. My tools are shiny not because I don't use them , but because after the day, I wipe them down with a diluted HF degreaser and the red rags that were free with. That's the same whether its a $10 Pittsburgh tool or a $200 snappy tool. You take care of tools, they take care of you.

Doyle driver also served as an awesome chisel this evening.

Stores are all closed, so I cant go find the correct sized sleeves that fit.

Socket looks ok. Lifetime warranty anyway 🤣

Special thanks to the redditor that suggested cramming a flathead driver in between the 2 lobes and center.

https://www.reddit.com/r/harborfreight/s/st9Wf8lczO

The only driver that fit perfectly was the one that came in the Quinn kit.

Surprised I didn't snap or bend the Quinn driver. I was expecting it to happen.

Anyway got enough of both screws to come off and then just used a locking plier after.

Little shits ....

Anyone know if HF has 5 point security bits or sockets in a kit or something?

Yes, it is a German MAF sensor, where standard 6 point security torx just wasnt good enough. It had to be a 5 point security bit (pentagon).