OTC 6980 Heavy Duty Brake Drum and Rotor Puller , black, biggest size

I wish I had bought this tool years ago. Removing the rotor is usually the only hard part of a brake job and even if you only use it once a year, the time and aggravation it saves make the investment in a tool like this well worth it after just one or two jobs.After spending three hours on my Mazda3 wrestling with the driver's side front rotor without this tool, the passenger's side was off in 45 minutes with it, and may not have come off at all without it. I'm guessing it will save me at least two or three hours per axle, and 90% of the aggravation associated with the work. Like I said, brake jobs are usually pretty easy except for removing the rotors.The hex head of this tool applying the force needs to be driven by a 1" socket, which is large by home repair standards but commonplace in a garage environment. I happened to have one, but did not have a ratchet with the 1/2" fitting to connect it to. So I used a large pipe wrench on the hex head, which was not ideal because it tends to chew up the fitting. Nevertheless, it worked, although the first time I cranked on it, I had to really whale on it before anything happened. The rotor ended up breaking like a cookie and I had to reposition the tool. EYEBALLS ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR AMAZON PRIME. WEAR SAFETY GLASSES AND DON'T FORGET TO SPIN ON A FEW LUG NUTS BEFORE YOU PUT TENSION ON THE ROTOR. The second crankdown popped the rotor off with relatively modest effort.In my opinion this gorilla-like device is a simpler, better system than the jointed puller devices with swiveling arms. Whatever would break this design, and I don't know what that would be with the brake systems I've seen on passenger vehicles, would have demolished the jointed designs long before.Other tips: lubricate the threads as well as the pointy tip of the hex bolt with some grease so that it turns more freely at the point that it touches the center hub. You might want to gin up a piece of metal to place over the hub to better distribute the force of the bolt across the hub, although I didn't do this. One you start putting pressure on, the process may be expedited with some WD-40/PB Blaster/Kroil/acetone-transmission fluid shot at the base of the lug nuts and front and back of the hub where the rotor touches it.

I've never had a real problem removing drums on any of my vehicles owned over the years. Back off the auto adjuster to collapse the shoes and sometimes disconnect the emergency brake cable to insure no tension on the shoes and remove the drum. Yes, at times I might have used a rubber mallet and within a few minutes they came off, never any real struggle. That was the case until I tried removing the drums on a 1999 F150 XLT. Tons of PB blaster, rubber mallet, hammer, BFH, and a sledge hammer over several days with no luck.I researched many pullers and finally decided on the OTC6980. All of the traditional three jawed pullers I looked at had issues like jaw ends snapping or were made from stamped metal. Also the spread of the three jaw puller I would have needed to do the job was far to expensive. Kastar makes a puller KAS-833, similar design and concept of the OTC6980. Napa has a puller SER833, also Matco tools BDRP833A, that are identical to the Kastar. The Napa and Matco puller could just be a re-bagged Kastar or vice versa. From what I've seen the OTC 6980 looks much stronger than the Kastar puller.First impressions of the OTC6980, heavy duty, thick and solid build. The jaws were a tight fit on the crossbar meaning that I couldn’t just depress the metal plates/tabs on the jaws and easily slide them on the crossbar by hand. With the metal plates/tabs depressed I used a rubber mallet with a few taps to get the jaws on the crossbar. The strap came in handy on my particular application because the space between the backing plate and drum are very small. Once I got the puller spread right I just had to align the jaws and tap them in between the back plate and drum with a rubber mallet. I could of used a pry bar to open the space but it wasn’t necessary. The strap helped, applying pressure on the jaws of my tight fit keeping them in place until the space opened up. I used my 2ft ½ in drive breaker bar and 1 in socket to turn the forcing screw and to keep clear of the drum in case it decided to break up on me. It took two pulls to remove my drums. After the first pull about half of the drum was bent so I backed off and turned the puller 90* then pulled again. For a little extra safety do follow the instructions and run two luge nuts on a couple of threads. Each drum took maybe five minutes to pull. Of course after seeing the drums bend about a half inch or so I wasn’t going to turn them and reuse them so I put new drums on. I’m sure I would have destroyed/cracked them if I were to keep on using the twenty pound sledge and would have probably still been whacking away at them if I hadn’t purchased this puller.Overall the quality of the tool is rock solid and did as advertised. Very pleased with my purchase. Something I wished others would have done in the review was to include the size drum they used this puller on. The spread on my drum is 12 and 7/8 in.

Bought this puller get the drums off a 60's Ford which had all but welded themselves onto the axles, would have never been possible without it! Make sure you leave a lug-nut or two on the studs to 'catch' the drum when it pops off, they can be pretty violent. Best method I found was to tighten the puller a few turns past making firm contact, then to tap around the edges and center of the drum with a rubber mallet a few times, tightening another turn and tapping on repeat until it finally comes off. Some penetration oil (not WD40) seemed to help. Good luck!