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Please lend your experience to us on this question.
When dealing with undoing rusty bolts and nuts, are they less likely to snap and beak the bolt shank when using an impact wrench compared to a hand tool?
A long service mechanic in our winter salty Province, Ontario, told me once to always use an impact loosening bolts as breakage is much less than with hand tools.
Today, on my wife’s 1999 Honda CR-V, I replaced the front sway bar rubber bushings, each held by two 12 mm short bolts, 8 mm shank and 1.25 mm pitch.
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Quoted From WDHewson:
Please lend your experience to us on this question.
When dealing with undoing rusty bolts and nuts, are they less likely to snap and beak the bolt shank when using an impact wrench compared to a hand tool?
A long service mechanic in our winter salty Province, Ontario, told me once to always use an impact loosening bolts as breakage is much less than with hand tools.
Today, on my wife’s 1999 Honda CR-V, I replaced the front sway bar rubber bushings, each held by two 12 mm short bolts, 8 mm shank and 1.25 mm pitch. These bolts have never been touched since installation, and were thoroughly rusty. My electric 1/2 inch impact backed these bolts out without breakage. The impact was working hard the whole time until the last thread disengaged.
I re-installed these bolts with lots of antisieze and with hand tools.
Hoping to learn your experiences.
Sometimes you can use penetrating oil and work it into the bolts by backing them off a little, spraying them and re-tightening them 2-3 times until the rust is freed up… I find the hammering action of the impact to be more effective than the true torque of hand tools, this is where you break stuff. Keep in mind, if it is turning hard, you are going to either strip it or break it! Use lots of oil if the fastener is ignorant and sometimes heat is the only thing that works.
TIP: If you do not have any anti-seize, use engine oil on threads or a light coating of wheel bearing grease; it works wonders at preventing rust.
I pull the dipstick out and oil the threads on my spark plugs and never had one seize in the aluminum head.
Impact is my choice, but I prefer to start on the low torque setting and let it impact for a while and gradually increase the setting. I’ve started on high and broke the head off a couple times and the aftermath is not fun. It also depends on the bolt strength. too. Higher strength bolts usually won’t break that easily but those rusty low strength bolts will break right off with the impact on high torque setting. You can never go wrong with heat!
I used the candle wax trick a little while back on some exhaust bolts I had to take out when doing a tranny R&R in a nissan sentra and it worked great.
The wax with an impact works GREAT!
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