Broken Welding Carts and METRINCH Parts

Jul 31, 2024 Last reply: 2 years ago 3 Replies

I have two of the cheapo $50 Harbor Freight welding carts. They are NOT built to the same standards as their tool boxes. They do work mostly. I have a full size AHP TIG 200 on one with a tall (210CF?) argon bottle. The other came from my dad's shop with the Weldmark 187 (Hobart/Miller) MIG machine and a middle size C25 bottle. The wheels broke on mine.



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I guess when they said it has a 100lb limit they meant it.



I didn't have to unload it to fix it though. I just happened to have a couple wheels I saved off of something on the shelf that were the exact same size. One of my Vevor toe jacks lifted it up so I could replace the wheels without unloading the cart. Done.



The cart that came from my dad's shop had loose casters. By loose I mean most of the bolts fell out, and the casters were hanging on by a thread. Literally.



Okay, after fixing the one welding cart I decided to deal with the loose casters on the other one.



I have some parts trays I bought years ago with hardware assortments in them. My thought was they were cheaper than the same/similar parts trays/racks empty. I figured even if I threw the hardware away the bins were worth it, and that was my plan. Rather than throw it all away though I doubled up the hardware from two tray racks into one. This left me with usable parts racks, and all the hardware. Sometimes I even use some of the hardware.



Today I grabbed some 1/4-20 bolts, and some 1/4-20 nylocks out of the trays to replace the hardware on those welding cart casters. The nylock nuts take a nice standard 7/16 socket, but the bolt heads are 10mm. No. Not a sloppy inch measurement that a 10mm works on. The heads are a nice fit in a 10mm wrench.



Here are some of the parts bins. I have 6 of these racks all together. They are every bit as durable as the Durham/Klein boxes they resemble, and they were a fraction of the price including the metrinch hardware.



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I have Durham boxes too. I am sure Durham made the Klein boxes. I also have one rack of Klein boxes. These "Olympia" boxes were probably made in China.



Anyway, both welding carts are good to go again.



I have a few of those metrinch bolts on my '86 GMC pickup motor .

3/8-16 threads and IIRC 15 MM heads . I exercise my cuss word vocabulary often when working on it .

Wow! Not counting any value of the hardware those are more expensive than a rack of Durham boxes.

Mine were purchased many many years ago. There used to be a warehouse store called Max Club. Kinda like CostCo or Sam's Club. They had a lot of Olympia stuff in their aisles. I bought a bench grinder and a screwdriver tip driver set there that both turned out to be very good. I carried the tip driver set in my service truck for years, and I still have the bench grinder and still use it. I didn't buy the Olympia boxes there. Max Club went out of business and I saw Olympia stuff appear places like Heartland America and Sportmen's Guide. My dad actually pointed out the Olympia boxes to me as I already had Durham boxes and Klein boxes. The Olympia boxes are about half way between the large and the small Klein/Durham boxes for size. I seem to recall the Olympia rack and trays complete were about $70 ($68 something comes to mind) from one of those online/catalog sales companies. The Klein and Durham boxes were not much cheaper than they are today. It was a deal. I suspect after losing Max Club as an outlet Olympia was looking to dump excess inventory to raise revenue any place they could. Now I wish I had bought more of then, although to be fair I kind of under utilize them. Some have small bearings. Some have tube fittings. Some have cable connectors and fittings. Half of them still have the hardware that came in them.

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