Cordless Impact Wrenches - Useful Tool?

[brumster 135 1 Cars]

I picked up a Sealey 24v one off eBay for £80 (not a buy it now but a proper action - was a bit lucky I think). It is a cracking buy for what I need - basically for whizzing off nuts in service on a rally, and general loosening of stubborn nuts/bolts in general. It's no Snap-On, and you can tell, but for the money it does exactly what I need it to do and it seems well built and so far has proved solid. Any more money spent, I think I'd have begrudged it for the use I give it.

[chipstick 382 1 Cars]

That's the thing I suppose. It's more about what you can justify. For hobby use I want something more than good enough, but not OTT that I'm paying hundreds extra for the sake of it for no benefit. I spotted Sealey ones at about £130 brand new, I'll look into which models are available and compare them to Clarke units.

[brumster 135 1 Cars]

Yes, mine was a retail price of £130 and I'd put a max bid in of 120, and would have been happy paying that to be honest. The £80 win was a bit of a bonus

[Anthony 1,003]

As said, Alan had my CIR450 off me, and whilst it was no Snap On, I was perfectly happy with it considering it was less than a third of the price of the Snap On and it managed just fine (well, when it wasn't attempting to burn my house down anyway! )

 

Do you have mains power where you're usually working? If you do, it might be worth considering the Clarke CEW1000 - I picked on up cheaply (£45 or so new) as the air tools I was going to buy fell though, and it's a great bit of kit with a decent amount of grunt that's whizzed off hubnuts etc with ease and ideal for the garage... it's just a bit useless if you don't have mains power!

[chipstick 382 1 Cars]

I have mains power where I do most of my work, but I wanted a cordless so I could take it along to a trackday, scrapyard or use it at other places without having to rely on a power supply or extension lead being available.

 

The CIR450 is looking like a strong contender. Anthony, Brumster - Have you had sucess with it on hubnuts?

[cRaig 273 1 Cars]

I have a CIR450, and have been very pleased with it, particularly useful at scrapyards as mentioned. It has let me down with one pair of hubnuts, but they were done up stupidly tight, far in excess of what they should have been

[Anthony 1,003]

My Clarke CIR450 only failed on one hubnut during the time I had it, and that hubnut was tight enough that I subsequently snapped my breaker bar attempting to undo it, so excusable. The CEW1000 I later tried it with did rattle it off after a few seconds, backing up my thoughts that it's a powerful bit of kit despite the on-paper similar claimed figures to the CIR450.

 

I used to use a Snap On 18v gun extensively for a couple of years or so, and that probably undid about 90-95% of hubnuts that I tried it with - great bit of kit, I just struggle to justify the cost for the amount that I would actually need to use it. If I was working on cars for a living then I'd have one unquestionably though.

[Anthony 1,003]

Other thought is that for the price of a CIR450 you could nearly buy a CIR24 and CEW1000.

 

CIR24 isn't far short of the CIR450 in real life despite the big difference on paper judging from my friends one that I've used a good few times, and would be fine for trackday and scrappy use, and then use the CEW1000 at home where it should do anything the Snap On would manage.

 

Best of both worlds for quite a lot less money than the Snap On?

 

Edit: Hmmm, maybe not, as they've put the prices up a bit since I last checked, and the CIR24 has been replaced by the CIR24B so no idea how that compares to the older one in terms of real-world performance - the on-paper figures sound similar and the gun looks the same though.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Anthony

[dave richards 26 1 Cars]

I have one of these, fantastic for everything I've used it for, took everything off I've ever asked it to with now worries at all, couldn't tell you how much they are though as I was given it

 

http://www.sykes-pickavant.com/Products/BrakingSuspension/Suspension/90802600/tabid/642/language/en/Default.aspx

[jamie_1992 66 1 Cars]

you get what you pay for really i have 2 snap on 18v 1/2 guns and 1 3/8 and between them i seem to undo anything with the odd occasion of getting out the 3/4 air gun

i get my 1/2 guns for £250 each. the only upgrade from what i have is to the new snap on gun but they are around £600 from snap on