Recommend me an electric (battery) impact wrench

[mrmr96]

I need a new electric (battery) impact wrench for changing wheels at trackdays. (Therefore can't be air, or mains powered.) It won't have a stressful life, since I crack the nuts with a breaker bar prior to lifting the tyre off the ground, and I use a torque limiting socket set at 70Nm and then finish them off by hand with torque wrench.

Effectively the impact wrench is just a faster way of spinning the nuts on and off of the studs.

I've tried the Clarke cig lighter one, and I'm not impressed as it uses an inertia wheel and is bloody violent. (i.e. no variable speed.) I also didn't like the lead, so I'm off that one and looking for a variable speed battery one.
http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/...


Therefore I'm now looking at this one, which looks similar to my old one. (Both batteries in the old one now dead and replacement cost is prohibitive.) It looks pretty straightforward, not overly complex and cheap compared to some of the others I've seen.
http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/...


Before I part with cash, do you lot have any other recommendations?
Cheers

[s2sol]

I've got one. I abuse it a lot more than you're going to, and it's been fine. I use it to get about 500 bolts a day to FT. It needs a lot of battery changes to do that, and the batteries need to cool for a surprisingly long time before they'll take a charge.

[yodel]

We use a clarke impact wrench, cost about £180 a while back. It has a tough life but does a good job. But if you are only spinning already loose nuts on and off I think you'd manage with something much less powerful, maybe you dont need an impact wrench at all. Having said that we use ours for all sorts of tough bolts, jobs we didn't think about when we made the purchase.

[ch427]

depends on your budget but that clark unit won the top award in a couple of car mags a while back for value and performance, looks good for the money.
Batteries on these (think they are ni cd) dont like being neglected or charged by topping up every time you use them which is sometimes why they fail quickly

Edited by ch427 on Wednesday 25th July 19:06

[Jefftav]

I've had this model for a few years from machine mart and use it in a similar way as you intend and it's been a good buy
http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/... impact wrench

[gsd2000]

ive got this one

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/...

not used it on the car yet

[mrmr96]

Cheers chaps.

[skeggysteve]

Jefftav said:

I've had this model for a few years from machine mart and use it in a similar way as you intend and it's been a good buy
http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/product/details/... impact wrench

Used one of those last year and it was great for spinning off wheel nuts, don't thing I ever needed the second battery over a two day race meeting. For the price it's very good.

Used a Snap-on one today, it undid the wheel nuts on a Land Rover Discovery with ease, but at about £600 it should do!

[mike88]

I have the hi torque Clarke one, £150ish from Machine Mart and works a treat. Gets abused and still works fine.

[virgil]

if it's only to spin the nuts on and off, a battery drill works well...use mine for bolts/nuts etc all the time. Just need an adapter for the sockets for under a tenner...

[Face for Radio]

To save starting another topic, I have been eyeing up impact wrenches for a few days, as I plan on doing more home maintenance on my cars. Sometimes undoing suspension bolts by hand isn't possible, so I want a good impact wrench to get them off.

A Snap-On will do the trick, but not interested in spending the money. Conversely, I don't want to pay £100+ for something which won't even get off torqued up wheel nuts.

Are those Clarke 24v efforts good for undoing rusted suspension components?

[Mr2Mike]

I have the 24v Clarke impact gun and it's really not that great to be honest. It will do wheel nuts provided it's fully charged and the nuts haven't been wound on too tight, but you can forget using it for anything remotely tight like hub nuts, crank pulley bolts etc. (it will just sit making a lot of noise until the battery goes flat). On mine the battery seems to last for ages, but the torque noticeably reduces after only a quite short length of time (i.e. it carries on going with reduced torque for a long time). It behaves the same with either of the two batteries, so I don't think it's a duff cell.

The decent cordless impact guns are very good (Snap On, Dewalt etc.) but they are also bloody expensive. The guy I service for at tarmac rallies has a very small 1/2" drive Dewalt gun (I think 18v) that is significantly better than my 24v Clarke one.

A proper air powered gun is very hard to beat - I have an old Snap On 1/2" gun (not one of the stupidly expensive high torque models) that makes the Clarke look like a silly toy.

Edited by Mr2Mike on Thursday 9th August 18:18

[Face for Radio]

Thanks. I will want one that I know can do the job, looks like I will need to splash out on the Snap On.

[Face for Radio]

Ended up getting a Snap-On through a friend of mine in the States. Ah well, I know it will do the job!

[Face for Radio]

To add some feedback, using the Snap-On is a dream. It whizzed off a 30mm hub nut on an 8-year old car without any effort at all. Worth the money.

[voicey]

If you're only using it to spin the nuts on and off then you can use one of these with your cordless driver/driver:

http://www.screwfix.com/p/nut-socket-driver-bit-se...

Edit: Sorry, just noticed you bought the Snap on.

[Mr2Mike]

Face for Radio said:

To add some feedback, using the Snap-On is a dream. It whizzed off a 30mm hub nut on an 8-year old car without any effort at all. Worth the money.

Which model did you get in the end, and what sort of money if you don't mind me asking?

[teamHOLDENracing]

The Sealey impact guns are well worth a look. Have used the 19v guns since 2003 (nicad batteries) at race meetings, and the batteries have only just given out. Just bought a couple of Sealey li-ion guns to replace a couple of them - only £15 more than replacing the ni-cad batteries

[Face for Radio]

Mr2Mike said:

Which model did you get in the end, and what sort of money if you don't mind me asking?

I got the CT6850, friend of mine in the U.S. sourced me a lightly used one for £280 delivered. Only problem being the ninky-dink charger the yanks used, so I needed to source a step-down transformer for the charger.

Still, when equivalents on eBay in this country were going for £350+ it has made it worth it.

[Mr2Mike]

Sounds ideal. Pointless buying a cheap one and never using it because it can't do it's job.