This thing rocks. On Saturday I installed snow tires on Kathy's car, rotated the tires on my 3/4 truck and swapped wheels on the M3 so I can sell the LTWs. That's 72 lug nuts including 32 that were torqued to 125 Ft/lbs last fall.
The Dewalt just ate it up and asked for more. It can easily remove lugs bolts when the wheels are off the ground. It's got plenty of power and makes quick work of everything I've thrown at it. When reinstalling wheels, the "rocker" trigger is nicely variable so it's easy to snug-up bolts without over torqing them.
That said I also got to use the 18v Snap-on and talk at length with a guy who owns one. As nice as the Dewalt is, the Snap-on is the best tools available. It produces well over 600 ft/lbs when removing fasteners. In fact the Snap-on is the only wrence designed specifically to remove fasteners. The Dewalt and the Milwaukee are both designed to drive-in fastners with the same power that they are removed. The Snap-on produces twice the torque when removing fasteners than when installing which is perfect for automotive applications.
So If you can part with 5-large for a cordless impact wrench, then grab the Snap-on. If your're thinking more like $300, then the Dewalt is a good choice.
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3 comments:
Damn. You had to go and say the Snap-on is better. I still remember the time I had to put a pipe on the end of a breaker bar (and then stand on it) to take some calipers off.
I'll let you know how I like it.
In general, choose Snap-on. Everything else is 2nd best (or worse).
When I was a mechanic, and older, wiser mechanic in the garage told me to buy good tools. You pay for them once and quickly forget how much you paid, but every time you use it you'll be happy you have it. If you buy a cheap tool, you'll quickly forget how much you paid for it, but be disappointed with the tool every time you use it.
No question that Snap-on are among the best tools you can buy -- I have a couple of drawers full.
However they cost about twice as much as very, very, good tools (I prefer Craftsman). Professional mechanics talk about how much better Snap-on is because the never break or strip fasteners.
I'm not a pro but work on cars pretty regularly and have never had a problem with Craftsman tools failing or stripping fasteners.
So, is a $20 Snap-on socket really twice as good as a $10 Craftsman socket? I don't know.
Is a $500+ Snap-on cordless impact wrench really twice as good as a $250 DeWalt? Again I don't know.
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