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Why you don't let clay use your tools

hensleya1

hensleya1

New member
Clay attempted to pull the wheels off his Eldorado as part of a front brake job. This guy sat around all morning for me to wake up, because he has no tools - no jack, no jackstands, no breaker bar, nothing to get the wheels off. Not to mention no c-clamps, no goodies, or anything. So I show up I learned the hard way that Capn' Breakalot always finds ways to live up to his name.

I don't get why he bought a computer and a tablet for Black Friday but no tools.


5z8s.jpg

1/2" to 3/8" adapter sheared off



kp70.jpg


The Capn' gloating over my second ruined breaker bar in three months

Luckily Harbor Freight has a lifetime warranty on all their hand tools.
 




The combo of his cheap tools and my wheel lugs that didn't want to loosen up was the issue.. My amazing talent of breaking things helped a bit as well :th_thumbsup-wink:
 
Hmm I bought harbor freight's 1/2 inch breaker bar, I think it was their 24" one, or whatever the longest is. I haven't broken it yet but I haven't used it too much. I had to break my rear lug nuts loose and that was the hardest I ever pushed it, they were really on there though. I'm thinking of getting a 3/8ths too, maybe I'll pass on harbor freight's lol.
Yeah if the tools you're breaking are from harbor freight, it doesn't count. Which one was it btw? Looks like 3/8ths
 


I have a Craftsman 1/2" breaker bar that I twisted the head on, but it hasn't broken yet. My cousin apparently had overtightened the axle nut on the Stealth and when doing another trans pull on it I was breaking the axle nuts loose and literally lifted the car with the breaker bar before the nut broke loose.
 
Wow. I have a craftsman 1/2 laying around, I should use that one instead. It's not nearly as long but I bet it's tougher.
 
My "breaker bar" is my 26" Matco ratchet. Now. When **** get serious we have a Kobalt bar that we slide a hollow strut tower brace over and we end up with like a 4 foot bar.
 
02NavyBlue said:
Wow. I have a craftsman 1/2 laying around, I should use that one instead. It's not nearly as long but I bet it's tougher.
Click to expand...

Just put a pipe on the end of it to extend it if you need more leverage. I had a 3 foot pipe on one to break the lugs off my old F150 and it still didn't break or twist. Of course that was an old one. I've heard new craftsman is not 1/2 as good as the old stuff.
 
This one if from the 90's so I may be in the clear. Although I'm looking into getting a Ingersoll Rand Impact that has like 780 ft lbs of torque, so I don't think leverage will be needed.
 


Yup. I'm looking around for pricing and will be buying one sometime soon. Of course I'll need some good impact sockets, not the junky harbor freight impact sockets that are as thin as regular sockets. That impact gun would destroy them.
 
I would never trust a harbor fright tool especially one your going to put alot of force on, Craftsman is good I have a ton of older Craftsman tools in my basement I mean like 70's-90's old and you can definitely tell there better quality then the new stuff. If I break an older craftsman ratchet I get a rebuild kit for it and rebuild it myself instead of trading it for a new one, but Craftsman ratchets suck anyway IMO. I like my Snap-On and Matco ratchets way better. I been using my dads Snap-On breaker bar he had since the 80's and it still works great and that thing has been put to work over the years and still going strong.
 
The new craftsman ratchets do seem a lot cheaper. They sound so hollow. What I noticed after taking two 3/8ths craftsman ratchets apart (one from the 80's, other from 2013) the older one has some grease in it to extend the life of the splines. The new one was dry as a bone, I don't know why they cheap out on something like that. I put some lithium grease in there and put it back together and it sounds like the older ones, and should last longer. At work I pushed my 3/8ths craftsman ratchet from like 2005 pretty hard, I was trying to break a bolt lose and had a 1.5 foot pipe over the end and used all of my weight(not that much weight though) and it took it. I heard a loud SNAP! but surprisingly it was the bolt breaking loose.
 
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