Electric Power Tools : Impact : Drill : Light : Air Pump

I don't know about you, but I like to have things that keep my life more simple. Uncomplicate things. I am not a professional mechanic. It is not something I do every day. I am more of a hobbyist that works on cars. I work on race cars on occasion, and I like to have tools that make working on cars easier.

So when it came time to decide on power tools, many years ago, I went with Sears/Craftsman C3 19.2v. These sets had a lot of advantages as Sears were all over the country, so you could get batteries or spare tools just about anywhere. They had a large variety of tools, so you could add to your needs as you needed them. Everything from a florescent light, to a sawzall and jigsaw. So everything from car projects to home projects. Sears and Kmart joined, so there were even more places to get 19.2 tools, batteries, and chargers.

Jada Toys R34 GT-R RC car

Then Sears/Craftsman took a pretty bad turn. Overall the 19.2 stuff was OK. Batteries failed, the black non Lithium batteries never seemed to last long or work out that well. There were also some aftermarket China options, and there still are.

From there, I decided to complicate everything. I had some old Makita stuff, and still do. It works ok, but I don't use it much. Slide on 18v batteries. Then when the C3 things started to go, I looked at other things. So I bought some Ryobi 18v, which Ryobi obviously made the Craftsman C3 19.2 stuff, at least a lot of it. Then I got some Milwaukee 12v items. These have some nice compact tools, and even a 1/2 very compact impact that is pretty buff. I saw that Ryobi had some 40v batteries, so for my sons Power Wheels, I had converted one to work with the 19.2v batteries, and it ran well. I figured 40 v would be even betterest. It did not immediately fry the controllers or motors on the first Jeep, but the 2nd Jeep had a motor failure. So now I have:

I have made things more complicated. Ideal would be the least amount of battery types. The least amount of chargers. The easier to find and replace. This isn't ideal, but its real life.

Now there are some adapters that you can buy like

18v Milwaukee slider to Ryobi 18v

Dewalt 20v to Craftsman 19.2

The 1/2 impact is surprisingly good. I have Snap On $500 impacts, and I mostly used a couple of these Craftsman 19.2 when we were racing/working on cars. The Snap On guns just were not 4 x better for me.

The sawzall works pretty good too. At $90 I don't think you can really go wrong