Art & Inspiration HF stud welder review...

Last fall our son's '65 Ranch Wagon was damaged when he pulled it out of their garage, and left it half across his wife's garage door. The obvious result was that, since he didn't tell her he'd moved his car there (to put their new kitchen cabinets in his side for their kitchen remodel), she opened the door and backed right into it, wrinkling the left front fender and door.
We couldn't find a body shop that was willing to to even give an estimate on it (Hagerty insurance) because of it's age, and their refusal to believe me when I told them what was under the paint was, in that spot anyway, virgin '65 Ford sheet metal. So, Hagerty sent and adjuster out to my place (where the car was stored), and I'm going to, unwillingly, fix it.
It had a bad crease in the front door at the character line, and minor damage to the front fender in the same spot. The paint was broken, so it had to be painted, which will allow me to take care of a slight "wow" where I welded a patch panel on the rear lower corner of that door that bothered me every time I looked at the car. Anyway, I went to HF and bought one of their cheap-o stud welders, on sale, for $77 a while back, and today I set out to see if it would work.
Holy Cow, does it ever.
Made the job really simple. I had taken the door card off, thinking I'd need access to the inside, but wouldn't have needed to. The only complaint about that I have is that the trigger is in an awkward place, it should be on the grip, but, other than that, for the money, it's a tool that seems indispensable for home shop bodywork. As much as a MIG welder and hammer/dolly kits and sanding blocks.
I've got a couple hours of work with some filler and blocking before I can prime it, but it works better than I could have hoped for.

 

Good job! I hate sheet metal work...

 

Yes, but it was a "she" that time, too!

 

I got one of those stud guns and it works fine but the stud puller broke after the 4 th stud and you can't find replacements

 

I have a super cheapo one from God-knows-where and it works fine. You can get extra studs from Eastwood too. If anything, the most important thing in the whole assembly is the slide hammer that is specially made to grab the stud. Pull dent, a little hammer and dolly work, some filler to dial it in... perfectly acceptable repair. Nice work!

 

My hf stud gun and puller have been going strong for 10 yrs+

 

You're kidding, right?

 

Hey now, it's not just the fairer sex. I backed into our garage with my plow truck, knocked the wall between the doors off the foundation, little garage door wheels flew all over the place, shook the whole house. It happens.

 

I had to pull a couple more low spots after I cut the first round of studs off, did that, then used a shrinker wheel. It barely needs any filler at all. It really made what would have been a difficult job easy. May not be the RIGHT tools, but for a home shop, I'm sold.

 

My HF stud gun works, the slide hammer absolutely sucks, and the scars are usually getting covered anyway. It’s mostly going to help you. It’s cheap enough too.

I recently got a lenco dent puller and it’s about 200 times better a real game changer.

 

Any Autobody supply store should be able to get you a new puller. You can buy them online pretty easily as well. Good ones are not cheap. You need to look for stud gun slide hammer.

 

I bought one a few years back for a guy to use on my daughters car. He too said it worked great.
Heck, until I saw this thread title I’d forgot I even had it.

 

Ive seen a guy work the studs w the claw end of a hammer and a block of wood to pry the studs up lightly for leverage, In addition to using the slide hammer as well. Also watched him use the stud gun w no studs to apply heat and shrink small areas. Pretty handy tools w some practice.

 

I've done the shrink thing as well. Pretty cool

 

Spitznagel, The Maxi. Leverage, no slide hammer.

 

Not picking on them. just relaying my personal experience as well.
Poop does happen, for sure! Both sexes.

 

I could see the areas I put the studs on pulling in with the weld, and thought that'd be handy for shrinking high spots as well. Thanks for the validation.

 

Brian I too bought one to pull some creases out of my buddy's 65 dodge Dart that he is restoring. It did the job pretty well I have to admit. Pulled about a 7 inch crease out of the quarter panel and some other assorted dents around the car. Definitely would use again but I am curious about the new panel pullers that use tabs epoxied to the panel with a release agent to get them off. No heating or grinding with that set up.

 

Had a horseshoe driveway and I always parked my older OT blue pickup all the way across the drive from the house so I wouldn't bother anyone when I went to work late at night. I'd just bought the wife a brand new bright yellow small grocery getter and she always parked it next to the house. Her sister came to visit, and they went shopping one day while I was sleeping. Came out headed for work and I could see yellow paint on my truck right behind the right side rear wheel well. The whole quarter was bashed in. I go back inside and asked her when she was going to tell me about it and she claimed she never hit my truck. Took her outside and showed her the scuff marks on her car. She still denied doing it and her sister backed her story. She was pissed off when I started putting safety cones around my truck. One month later, I'm trying to get some sleep before I went to work and she came in crying. She had decided to go to the grocery store while I was asleep and backed into the truck again in the same spot as before. She took out two of the orange cones as well.

 

I managed to give myself a really nice blood blister with it, and the handle pad wants to slide off, but I have to say it's usable tool. If a guy was using it all day, every day, it'd be unacceptable, but to use once and sell at a yard sale (or my estate sale when I'm dead), it's great.

 

I can see spending some money on a better puller would be a good investment. The welder itself looks, and feels, pretty good. Taking little bites is the key, so as not to put much stress on the any one stud. It really worked very well.

 

I have my old Matco one I bought in the mid 90s, it has a couple of different tips besides the one for the studs. One stud, one for shrinking and one for spot welding. It's great for late 60s and newer sheet metal, takes a little more work on older thicker material.

 

Nice work, It helps to have real metal under that paint though.
Back in the 70's when we lived in Texas we had a house with a two car garage and my wife's car usually got one side and the other side was my work side. The 48 or my T bucket usually took up that side.
Anyhow I drove our 69 Baracuda fast back somewhere and when I got back I left it just a little crooked in the garage but if you backed straight out it wasn't and issue, Yuppers she decided that she needed to straighten it out before backing out and put a scrape down the side of it. About two years later she totaled it when she was racing back to work after lunch and missed the corner and flipped it over on it's roof end wise. I sold it to a wrecking yard in Crawford Tx and a few days later some circle track guys from Fort worth showed up and bought and cut the body skin off the car for a dirt track car .

 

I would like to find one of those tips for shrinking with my Harbor Freight gun.
Nobody seems to list such a thing.
Never mind, I found one.
https://www.amazon.com/Auto-Shot-HS...fa-8f46-7f6aeb20b1c8&pd_rd_i=B000O3GDI6&psc=1

 

There was another review a while ago for a slightly different design of dent puller that the user really liked. Now that was for an expensive model but in the thread we found out there is an affordable model. Ive been thinking about buying a hobby use stud puller and Im curious how people feel about the traditional model like the one in this thread vs the type from the other thread that Im linking.

Amazon.com: VEVOR 110V Spot Welder Dent Puller, 3000W Stud Welder Dent Repair Kit, 7 Models Spot Welding Machine for Car Body Dent Repair : Automotive

 

$77 and it works great vs $300. I dunno, seems like, unless you're doing production work and going to use it all day, every day, for 1/4 of the price, the HF one looks like I made the right decision...

 

That was my thread.
The best thing you can do is to read all the reviews you can or use the vevor tool yourself.
Look up a few videos on how that type of tool works. First Decide on what you want or need to achieve.
I can tell you with absolute certainty the HF stud gun works. My lenco costs 12x as much and is 20 times more capable. 3 jobs in it’s paid for itself based on productivity alone, and that extra productivity time has freed me up to do other shit like work on my own hot rod. The HF stud gun can’t aid you in finishing work of raising highs and lows, there’s no grinding with the Lenco. While welding in panels the lenco is really nice for finishing without dolly access.
I’d compare the tools with a gardening analogy. A spade shovel (hf stud gun) to a small 2 stroke rototiller, so look at how much dirt you need to turn, how accurate do you need to be, how nice it needs to look, how much time do you have, and what else you could be doing.

 

I have an HF version also, bought it around 5 years ago. Still works well, although I agree the slide hammer is not the greatest. If I were still doing body work full time I would most likely be looking for something better, but I'll recommend one for someone who may only use it occasionally, or even once to get a project done. I used the crap out of mine for a couple years, no problems. I also bought a 4-30 die that will thread the 3mm studs, if anyone is interested in that, I think Crazy Steve turned me onto that tip.

 

To follow up: Yesterday I thought I'd quickly get the project pretty much wrapped up, but the reason no body shops would touch the car (or even write an estimate) was made crystal clear. At the bottom corners of both doors (where indeed the sheet metal was virgin '65 Ford) were a couple of tiny blisters in the paint, which of course had rust pinholes behind them. When I'd painted the car for our son 5 years ago, we had made new corners on the rear of both of those doors for the same reason, at the time the front corners of both showed no sign of cancer.
That was then, this is now. It wasn't a surprise, as the blisters showed, and the dents could have been fixed without addressing the rust, but why leave it, or just pound the spots and pack a little 'glass filler, which is what most shops would have done.
So, on my knees in the driveway (my decision to use the bumper lift and not get the lift out and get the car up at eye level now obviously a poor choice) I made new little patch panel. Both spots are where the outer skin almost touched the inner, dirt leaves and crud were packed in between, leading to the rust.
My lack of practice welding was brought into sharp focus, but I managed to get them blubbered on without warping the crap out of the doors. While I was still working on the car, I went ahead and pulled three little low spots on the dent with the stud welder. It's hard with the nails on to feel where the panel is, but it's super easy to lift them once all the nails are cut off to tell what needs more work.
I'm really glad I bought the stud gun, it made this job go really well.
Now I'm waiting on the color chart from Kirker paints, as I didn't bother to write the color code down and I don't remember which of their 5 different whites I used. Oh well, it's too hot right now to be working this hard, I'm retired, after all... View attachment 5744866 View attachment 5744867 View attachment 5744866 View attachment 5744867 View attachment 5744866 View attachment 5744867