What do you all recommend? Main uses will be knocking off rust to get to metal, cutting metal, smoothing welds. Small enough to fit in tight spots. Electric power source. Thanks,

Nate

I bought a 5" Milwalkee from Home depot. picked up some cutting wheels. Works like a champ.

I Like my 4" hitachi that I picked up from lowes, much better and quieter than the POS unit I got from HF (was cheap and gets the job done)

The petite ones preferably. The big ones have a tendency to knock you over!

My mind is tellin me no but my body my body's tellin me yes
I don't want to hurt nobody
But there is something that I must confess...

You can't beat the harbor freight 4.5" angle grinder. So cheap you could consider it to be a disposable tool! I had a Shop tool brand one that got away from me and hit the floor. It broke in half. The chicago brand ones are pretty tough. I use them for wire wheel, grinding and I use the .040" cutoff disks.

I have a ryobi and a "GMC" home depot brand basically. the little GMC kicks ass but the ryobi has a nice feature of being able to put the handle on the top, for sideways grinding and cutting.

Get the 4.5" and not the 4". I find it hard to find the flap disks for the 4" grinders. I bought an adapter to get my 4" to run the 4.5" disks.

Yeah...just got a 4.5" Ryobi at HD and it rocks.

My Costco up here had this Hitachi 4" electric for $29.95 yesterday.

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I need one too and will probably be picking one up soon.

Look at all the wussy grinders. My 13 amp 7.5 inch and grinder laughs at any job "too cramped." It just makes the room required.


(for small jobs I use my air grinder... I just wanted to be an asshat)

Harbor Freight, bought 2 about 5 years ago for around $20 to do some fiberglass work, figuring they'd be toast once the job was done. They've been through hell since then and still going strong.

Tom

I tend to like the cheap HF 4.5". I have three. One for knotted wire, one for thin cut off and one for grinder. When they eventually die (they usually work a long time) I just buy another one. With how I abuse them, I can't see spending more for a better one.

I have to go with the HB ones. First one lasted 2 years. With coupons and specials you can get them for $12. Two are nice so you can keep a different wheel on each and not switch back and forth.


Bruce

I got a skill professional grade one for Xmas 15 years ago, gota love my dad. Works good, but has a weird arbor on it. Can't get sanding disk backings for it. My dad has the a Milwauke and it really rocks and you can get anything for it.

For general use as mentioned already a 4 or 4.5" electric grinder is probably what you want. Pneumatic die grinders are great if you have the air source as well as a being good alternative to an electric grinder, but they don't have the same torque for the big grinding jobs.

I have 2 4" (4.5" I don't know) grinders. The first that I've had for 10 years is a Dewalt that only cost me $40 or so brand new. It still cranks away, nice and smooth.

The second I bought when I was stripping the 6 tub so I wouldn't have to change wheels. It's a HB cheapo. Gets the job done, but it sounds like it's grinding rocks before you even put a load on it.

If I were only going to buy one grinder, I'd get a decent one. You get what you pay for. And if you're one and only grinder is an HB, and it quits on you when you least expect it, you'll be schlepping to HB to get a replacement.

I have a nice DeWalt 4.5" grinder. Its the second DeWalt I've owned. The first lasted for 6 years of complete abuse, and I hope this one will last as long. At one time I had a HF grinder. It was one of the $12 cheapies, and lasted only a few weeks. I completely agree with Gint; its not worth it to me to have tools fail in the middle of a project so if you have only 1 grinder go buy a relatively nice one. They aren't too expensive.

I used a friends Riobi (sp?) and liked that too; though not as much as the new DeWalt with quickchange arbor. The quickchange feature is awesome!

Thanks for all the info. I'm going to drop by HD and check out the Dewalt and Riobi, and then to Costco to see what they have.

I like a 4 inch makita the best but I also have two 4 inch hf grinders. The big 6 or seven inch grinders are ok but usually are too big for most car body tasks. When you get up to the big stuff a sander and a grinder is needed because of the differences in their speeds. I also use a bunch of 2 inch air sanding disks and scotchbrite pads. For the cut off wheels I use a long straight air cutoff tool with the 1/16 thick disks. Another problem with the big stuff is if it ever gets hung under another piece of overlaping metal and gets away from you it will change your outlook on sanding for awhile.