Air Tools

[czechsonofagun]

I am wondering. Do you use air tools to work on your car? Like ratchet and impact wrench?

I just finished replacing flywheel ring gear on my jeep using only hand tools - can not imagine how to do something like that with air tools, but I never had to use them and never even had them. Does it make sense for an average shade tree mechanic to try to change the way of wrenching?

 

[Bird]

Does it make sense for a shade tree mechanic? I don't know, but I know I'd hate to be without mine. I honestly don't know how anyone can do without an air-compressor, and if you have a compressor, the air tools are SO handy. I almost do no mechanic work anymore, but I still have to have my half inch impact, three-eighths air ratchet, angle die grinder, siphon type engine cleaner gun, two blow guns, tire chuck, paint spray gun, quick couplers, and enough air hose to reach anywhere on my property. My brother and I did do a front end brake job on his one ton dually Powerstroke Ford Thursday in my garage. And even though I really don't need them anymore, I miss my air powered reciprocating saw, air drills, and sandblasting equipment.

Of course it does depend on the individual. I can't imagine doing much wrench turning without an air ratchet, but when my brothers owned a garage and were both mechanics, neither of them owned an air ratchet. They used air impacts all the time, but not ratchets; said they didn't like the sound. Unbelievable to me, but different strokes for different folks.

 

[DieselPower]

Personally I own about every air tool known to man. But then again I'm a mechanic. All of mine are either Snap On or Mac Tools. For the shadetree mechanic you can usually get by with a cheap set from someone like Harbor Freight or some other no name company. No they don't last as long and have nowhere near the power as the name brand ones do but they sure are alot better than plain old hand power.

 

[czechsonofagun]

Personally I own about every air tool known to man. But then again I'm a mechanic. All of mine are either Snap On or Mac Tools. For the shadetree mechanic you can usually get by with a cheap set from someone like Harbor Freight or some other no name company. No they don't last as long and have nowhere near the power as the name brand ones do but they sure are alot better than plain old hand power.

So, say, to take skid plate, transfercase, transmission, clutch off- you would first try to use air ratchet or impact wrench and only if there is not enough space look for hand wrench?

I am asking stupid questions, I know, but as I said - I never used them.

I remember at least one time - pressing struts with spring compressor - I really wished to have some power help; killed my forearms on it big time.

 

[DieselPower]

Yep, I use air tools whenever possible. The hand wrench's and ratchets only come out for hard to reach items and when there are only a couple bolts. When you do it for a living time is money and getting a job done faster usually means a happier customer with a lower repair bill that is more likely to come back again.

 

[dgl24087]

Air tools sure make my arthritic hands and shoulder feel better.

 

[Bird]

This past Friday I bought an external CD/DVD burner and was going through old records, disposing of stuff, making current backups of my data, etc. and found I had old backup copies of computer files on the old 3.5" floppy discs, 100 and 250 mg. Zip discs, and a few CDs. I even found a lot of stuff I thought had been lost or destroyed long ago, including copies of all the invoices I did when I was repairing/rebuilding mechanics' air tools from 6-7-98 to 7-27-01. I guess I only worked on about a thousand of them. I printed 983 invoices, but of course, worked on a few that I never wrote up.

 

[TractorLegend]

Flywheel bolts off: air tool
Flywheel bolts on: Torque wrench & thread sealer if its a hollow crank (bolts go into oil)

 

[RonR]

Diesel,

I have to agree on HF as an alternative. When I was younger, I wrenched for a living, and had only snap on stuff. Wouldn't buy any cheap stuff as I needed it to last a lifetime!

Well, last time I was in HF, they had a 4" electric grinder for $15! To tag alone with my 9" grinder, I figure I can use this one for small stuff, and toss it when it breaks.

This week, I was in HF to pick up some dolly wheels--came across an air cut off tool for $9.99. The two 10 packs of cutting disks were also $9.99 each. Sure it doesn't have the power of a "real one", but I'm older now, so lifetime stuff doesn't have to last as long, hah!

My son was helping me last weekend, and I had him guess on the tool prices--he was triple over on each.

Wouldn't want all my tools to be HF, but for light duty stuff, it's ok for me.

And I use air tools all the time if I have more than a couple of bolts to remove. Best use ever: I changed the guards on a 9 foot sickle mower--zipped those nuts loose in no time!

Have fun,
ron

 

[Bird]

There's certainly nothing wrong with cheap stuff like Harbor Freight tools as long as you know what you're getting. I used a Central Pneumatic half inch impact for several years. It was a knock off of the Chicago Pneumatic CP734 and it never failed me once, but I knew it only had about 250 ft./lbs. of torque while the CP734 had 425 (big difference), and I eventually went to an Ingersoll-Rand IR231 for my personal use. But I used a 3/8" Central Pneumatic butterfly and a Central Pneumatic 3/8" ratchet for many years and never had a reason to replace them. Right now, my half inch impact is an IR231H, but my angle die grinder and 3/8" ratchet are from Harbor Freight.

Snap-On is the old standard, but their air tools are made in Japan just as the other brands are, and they're no better, no worse than Chicago Pneumatic and Ingersoll-Rand which also make the MAC, Matco, and Cornwell air tools. My complaint with Snap-On is simply that their parts are not interchangeable with the others and will cost twice as much if you have to buy parts for one.

 

[EddieWalker]

Prokop,

The air ratchet isn't very useful. They are noise and don't have allot of power. For long threads, they will speed things up, but it should be at the bottom of your list.

A decent impact wrench is worth it's weight in gold. Just think about taking off a tire. Jack it up and squeez the trigger, and your lug nuts are off. Two seconds per nut and they are off. Without, you have to break them free, then jack up the car, and then wratchet them off. There is no effort with the impact wrench.

The same is true for anything else that you can get the impact wrench onto. There is no effort on your part to take off a bolt or nut. My dump truck, dozer and backhoe have bolts that are torqued down to 500 to 700 pounds. I don't care how big a breaker bar you have, you will never get them apart by hand. I use a 3/4 impact wrench with over 1,250 pounds of torque.

My regular impact half inch impact is how I take off the blades for my shredder. With all the moving parts, I have no idea how I'd lock them in place if I had to use a breaker bar. With the impact, it's a ten minute job per blade.

Putting thing back together with the impact is just as fast, but you have to be sure the threads are not stripped and you don't overtighten anything.

My other favorite air tool is the air grinder. I have a metal cutting tip on it and it words great for shaving off bits of metal or getting old parts to fit together again.

If you ever decide to do any woodworking, air nailers and brad nailers will completly change your world. Not the same as impact guns, but there is no comparing how fast and good they are.

Eddie

 

[SPYDERLK]

Czech, you will find manyuses for air tools, and they are cheap if you do you preliminary assessments using HF stuff, then choose to get selected good stuff. Often they make virtually impossible things trivially easy. If you do any sizable mechanical work buy a GOOD 1/2" impact. The cheapies are sometimes good but this is your basic indespensible. Spend the $1-200 -- dont risk wasteing the $40 on a cheapie. Get a cheap blogun and die grinder. Also a cheap pneumatic hammer and a needle scaler accessory for it. Not sure about air ratchets - - mine just dont get used. It pays to use air tho - it makes life easier.
Larry

 

[CurlyDave]

It really depends how your shop is set up.

I have a 1/2" impact, 3/8 rachet, etc. The only problem is that everything is jammed in a garage about 30% as big as it should be, and frequently it is faster to just use hand tools than to get out the air compressor.

For instance, the total time to rotate tires on my car is about an hour with a speed wrench, maybe 30 minutes with the impact. But, getting out the air compressor & putting it away at the end of the job takes 20 minutes and it is hardly worth it. If I had a shop with the air compressor set up permantently it would be a different story.

Carpentry work is entirely different. I will spend an the extra time to use an air nailer, especially a finish nailer even for two or three nails. The reason is that I have never had an air nailer leave a hammer mark on wood, which is something I can't say about my right arm.

 

[BTDT]

Air ratchets have their place (in the trash can) . Not really, I used mine alot, but you had to be careful, because when you least expect it, it would tighten up the bolt/nut and slam your hand into frame or some other immovable object. Pinched my fingers on several occasions. But the funniest thing about them is the way they make you dance, when unexpectedly you step on it and it makes that air ratchet noise, you jump like you stepped on a snake or something.

 

[jwstewar]

The same is true for anything else that you can get the impact wrench onto. There is no effort on your part to take off a bolt or nut. My dump truck, dozer and backhoe have bolts that are torqued down to 500 to 700 pounds. I don't care how big a breaker bar you have, you will never get them apart by hand. I use a 3/4 impact wrench with over 1,250 pounds of torque.

I don't know about that. I've seen Dad change a lot of semi tires "on the side" from his real tire changing job with only a small ac to re-air the tires after he would change them. I don't remember the name of the tool, but I'm sure he still has it, but you would put it together to form a 4-way type wrench but the "cross" wasn't fixed. You would rock it back and forth to force the lug nuts off or on. I've also seen him use a breaker bar with about 10 or 12' foot pipe on it. What makes this all the more interesting, when Dad would do this (about 15 - 20 years ago) he was 50+ years old 5'10" and weighed about 130 lbs soaking wet - which he usually was after doing this.

 

[mikim]

I like my air ratchet best for driving long lag bolts into wood. My impact I rarely use - but all my nailers -- I don't leave home without 'em. So I guess it all depends on what type of "work" you do and how much of it.

 

[Bird]

Your guys are entertaining to say the least. Repairing the ratchets was a major part of my air tool repair business, and I think anyone in the business will tell they're a pain to work on. But the primary reason so many of them have to be repaired is because obviously most mechanics use them a lot and use them for a breaker bar instead of stopping to get the right tool. Like EddieWalker said, they don't have a lot of power, but do have a lot of speed. One of my customers was a paint and body shop where the owner had Snap-On's highest priced air ratchet and I replaced the anvil in it 3 times because he hired kids to remove damaged parts on vehicles he was fixing and that ratchet was a long one and the kids simply broke the anvil out of it using it for a breaker bar.

As for them jerking your hand around and skinning your knuckles, yep, they sure will unless you want to spend the money to get an IR111, a "reactionless" ratchet also called the "knuckle saver". It actually has a tiny impact mechanism in front of the air motor so when it gets tight, it starts working as a little impact wrench. Neat tool, but expensive.

And as for it being too much trouble, or taking too much time, to get the air-compressor out, I'm sure that's true for a lot of folks, but that's a problem I don't have because mine stays fully aired up and ready to use all the time. Even if I don't use it for anything else, I use it nearly every day to blow the whiskers out of my electric razor.

 

[AlanB]

Bird, you hit it before I could say it, my dad has that "impact ratchet" and loves it, his arthritic / carpal tunnel surgery done on each hand loves the air and other impact tools.

I just figure I am lazy, and a tool junky, but I use the air tools constantly. But we do use the air compressor daily so it is always sitting there quietely ready to go. With the landscape equipment I don't think a day goes by without having to air up the tires on something I think we did 4 last night, and the DW had to do one or two more this morning she said.

I would say spend the big money on the 1/2" air impact, I grab mine more than any other air tool I think (although lately the 3/8" Impact has been coming close) and the other ones, get decent quality pieces but not the premium if you are just using them occasionally.

 

[czechsonofagun]

Eddie:

I hear you about the impact wrench and tires; that makes perfect sense. Air nailer we used a lot when building horse fence, that really makes it go fast. But while helping friend on house framing we used air nailer - and my impression was the hammer actually tightens the wood closer while driving the nail in - the air nailer just zips the nail in and the connection is not as strong.
My opinion only

I do quite a lot of woodworking and on wood trim I wished for air nailers already, using a hammer and driver on finishing nails is a major PITA.

I am bit old fashioned in a way - I prefer carpenters axe to a hammer and never got used to american framing hammer.

Bird:

thanks for the idea, I will look into 'reactionless' rachet.

Mikim:

For long lag bolts I use my corded drill


Well, thank you, everybody. It helped me a lot. I already use some power tools - like battery drill - to help with long threaded bolts and it makes only sense to start using the compressor more.

 

[CurlyDave]

I am bit old fashioned in a way - I prefer carpenters axe to a hammer and never got used to american framing hammer.


A friend used to use a roofing hatchet instead of a hammer. Until one day he was in a hurry and picked it up backwards.

Fortunately, his aim was good and he struck the nail squarely with the sharp edge. He nearly fainted right there on the roof, thinking about the fingers he almost lost.

As long as I knew him, he stuck to hammers after that.