Harbor Freight Pulley Puller and Installer Kit Vs. MATCO's Kit

hey how's it going everyone Justin again as always thanks for watching my channel welcome back make sure to thumbs up if you like this video or the thumbs down if you don't comment about either one of these two products I'm about to share with you today and some of my thoughts and experiences using both of these sets and why I went with one set over the other set let's get into it the Pittsburgh set you could pick up from your local Harbor Freight for 1899 plus tax the Matco set part number MST 9 3a you could pick up from your Mac code to vendor and sometimes on eBay buy or some kind of garage sale or Craigslist ad these are how different ways you can come across that you need to pick it up on the tool truck itself not sure if you can order it online or not but it comes in at 7995 literally four times more expensive than the Harbor Freight set if you consider how much the Harbor Freight set actually costs let's lift the lids open them up see what they come with and then we'll talk about my experience with the quality so opening up both sets you can see they both come with their own little instruction sheet kind of show you how to use it one paper instruction sheet here in a plastic ziplock bag the other one comes on a more of a wax dry-erase kind of film which is pretty handy which means it's Derb the durability of the instruction should last a little bit longer than the paper one should you forget how to use it down the road looking at all the different pieces that it comes with you can see that it comes with pretty much the same adapters the other one comes with this one has more of a black oxidized washer that it comes with and then of course you got your bearing and then you got the nut driver portion here you got the cups that are two different styles of width one more narrow the other one a little bit wider depending on what kind of power steering pulley you might be trying to pull off to gain access to the hardware to remove the power steering pump or maybe you need to remove the pulley because the pulley is actually bad and you're gonna replace it either way this kits going to come in handy for that not gonna do a lot with alternator holy pulling unless you're working an old-school alternator but more commonly than not you're gonna run into situations where you need to remove the power steering pump pulley and this is what that kit comes in handy for looking over at the Harbor Freight kit you do get some kind of chrome looking washer here crush washer as well as a bearing looking at both bearings you can see that they're both completely different sizes one's a little bit thicker than the other you can see that the internal component is kind of secured by this outer shell where this one is more of a bearing on the inside of what looks like another washer where this one is the bearing what's built into it a little bit coarse kind of binding up there trying to rotate it so not the best quality as far as the bearing goes this bearing you can clearly and easily see that it moves with ease going over to the actual clamping portion that goes around the pulley itself you can see here on this one you put it back in the shelf for a moment it almost appears to be the same size on both sides one's a little bit more kind of oblong kind of like the Dairy Queen symbol this one's more round not sure the reason or purpose behind that maybe the idea was is that making it this way would make it wider for a wider pulley and maybe this one would be more narrow looking and comparing them both to each other side by side you can definitely see a bore diameter difference and how much grabbing metal you actually have compared to the other one so not really a huge fan of the clamping portion either you can also see very poorly machined at best but not bad for a one-time use in my opinion just throwing that out there okay let's get back to it you also have the button insert that goes into the threaded portion like so and then of course you'd push that on thread that down into the pulley you know for this one the o-ring just seems to be a little bit oversized for what you actually need for this in order to kind of clear that up I would put some lubricant around this trying not to destroy this because I'll probably return this kit just wanted to use it as an example because I actually have bought in this kit twice in the past for the same exact car to remove the same exact pulley and it failed me two times so I ended up buying this kit taking this kit into consideration with its little button you can see that the o-ring is actually sits down and more like a recessed groove and it's not nearly as hard to push in as the other one but still requires a little bit of lubrication as well see I kind of accidentally tore the o-ring a little bit so if you're going to use this make sure to lube that up a little bit you also get various types of threads now looking at the threaded portions that it actually has that would go into this portion here so you can thread this onto your into your power steering pump it comes with multiple adapters they look and appear to be of similar quality as far as this portion is concerned I did not have an issue using the install portion of this my biggest issue was using the removal portion of this tool so just throwing that out there for a tip to somebody I did end up using this set again to install the pulley not a problem a little bit of lubricant will go a long ways for this kit and the pulley make sure if you're going to be removing the pulley use some kind of rust penetrant on or around the pulley where it it's pressed onto the shaft spray around that real good so that penetrant oil can get in there and when you're getting ready to reinstall the pulley make sure you use something like white lithium grease or something like that so there's a more of a ease of pulling the pulley back on if you still have trouble pulling and pushing or pressing that pulley back on you might try to reroute the serpentine or drive belt around that pulley if it's possible maybe lightly tap it on with a hammer don't get too crazy because we're not trying to damage the pump but if you lightly kind of tap it against the shaft itself to kind of get it partially set and you reroute the drive belt around it that's going to help to kind of hold that pulley still while you're trying to press it on so overall if I had to do this all over again absolutely I would go with the Matco set it's literally four times the cost of this but it's four times less of a headache than this set for sure like I said I had bought in this set to remove and install a pulley on my Dodge Ram the button here just completely destroyed and mushroomed and it actually got stuck on this portion of the thread and I couldn't get it off so I had to return the set and I only was able to pull the pulley halfway off I then tried the newer set and tried to lubricate the seal and was able to get the the pulley to almost come off and again same exact thing this became really mushroomed and I practically had to beat this thing off with a hammer and took it back ended up buying this set in case I finished the job pulled that pulley off went back to this set just to see if it was even worthwhile in keeping to install and I was able to successfully install the pulley using this set so overall in a pinch you might be able to get the job done with this long-term scheme of things for the occasional time that you need it less of a headache less time less drive time having to go back and forth the store to warranty a tool out as you can see even the bearing this being a brand new kit that I picked up today not so good maybe even real Oubre keep that up and try to run it around a few more times just to kind of get whatever grit is caught in there it seems like I'm kind of loosening it up now but still just keeps getting hung up on something any rate that's the kit there in a nutshell my reasoning for going with the Matco installer kit pulley puller kit versus the the Harbor Freight one here that's my reason for doing it again and a pinch guys this would work but overall I'd rather pay a little bit more and get a lot better quality tool out of it that's all I got for this video guys make sure you hit the thumb up like this video if you didn't give it a thumbs down if you're interested in either one of these kits make sure to go to Harbor Freight check it out on the website or you can go to Matco and check it out on the website don't just take my word for read the reviews it's all I got see you guys later

Channel: Justin Dow

Views: 139,430

Keywords: Justin Dow, MATCO Tool, Pulley Puller and Installer Kits, Harbor freight tools, Harbor Freight Pulley Puller and Installer kit, Harbor freight, Don't buy this

Id: pH7uP3aJ8a4

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 28 2018