Cliff, where in the bay area are you? You need to get acquainted with Harbor Freight (Vallejo or Newark) or harborfreight.com. They have a huge selection of air tools. Most of the stuff is cheap Chinese or Taiwanese made but it's dirt cheap. And, quite frequently it looks exactly the same as the stuff with the Craftsman label. Also, little stuff like hoses, connectors and fittings, socket sets are way cheap. For example, Sears wanted $80 for a deep socket set and
Harbor Freight wanted $20.
Many people will say that you get what you pay for but when the cost is 1/10th of retail at Sears you can think of the stuff as disposable and for a DIYer I think cheaper stuff often makes better financial sense. For less than $10/ea. I got a
die grinder, cut off tool, and air chisel. If I had to pay $150/each I wouldn't have bought those tools but at $10 they have provided far more than $10 worth of usefulness.
That said, I think you should splurge on the impact gun and the ratchet. The reason is that the cheap ones don't have enough umph to break tough frozen bolts. I bought a really nice IR impact gun similar to the previously mentioned
2135TI except it doesn't have the titanium. My next purchase will an IR ratchet. The other thing I've noticed about the IR tools is that they are a lot quieter and lighter if they have the composite body compared to the cheapies.