Is a 500 ft-lb rated impact wrench strong enough to loosen all bolts on a 1st gen?

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Depends on where you live.

 

Good question. PNW. The road DO get salt in snow.

 

Most rusty bolts will break or strip w 500 before giving. But if you know they are gonna do that, you hit em w blaster or free all then heat. Then the milwaukee nut buster is the most consistent w out break/stripping for me. Worth the money for sure.

 

Leaf springs and cam shaft bolt would be the only ones you might not get

 

I should hope so. If you need more than that, PB blaster and a sit overnight will do the trick.

 

500ftlbs sounds like a lot but I don't really believe so in practice. I think you can take care of 95% of stuff but things like crank bolt, axle nut, leaf bolt, etc might give you trouble.

Hell, I hit the front diff drain plug with a 1,170ftlb impact gun and it didn't move one bit. I'm going to weld a nut on it and try again.

 

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. Archimedes ·

 

Some times 2000 foot pounds in reverse is not enough.

depends on the hardware and the location where the truck lives.

where the problems start is tightening hardware so easy to snap off bolts.

 

I try to avoid tightening with impact driver. I sometimes use it to spin them on most of the way under the "auto" setting where the wrench stops just before the first impact strike.

 

M18 ftw

 

No way. Only good for lug nuts and that's about it.

 

Keep in mind it's impact torque. If the bolt is long or going through a rubber bushing, the flexibility of the parts will absorb a lot of the impact. A common example is leaf spring U-bolts.

I have an M18 mid-torque that's advertised for 650 ft-lb and validated on Youtube tests, yet it struggles with lugnuts if I use a 3/8" extension.

 

As said above, no. You will likely want more power.

 

What a lazy post. I'm gonna ignore this guy finally.

 

Valid point. The socket being used also plays a big part. Big heavy impact rated sockets will work better than a regular socket.

 

No my guy. For a 1/2 inch you want around 1000 at least or it’s really not worth it.

 

In CA I can do most bolts on the truck with 240 forward 430 reverse. I have a high torque with 740 forward/1180 reverse but almost never use it because it’s heavy and the others can usually get the bolts.

my order of most to least used:
1. Milwaukee 3/8 m12
2. Tie between makita 1/4 hex impact driver and makita 1/2 compact impact
3. Makita high torque least used by a lot

that said, I’m glad I have all of them. If I had to get rid of one it’d be the compact makita 1/2 impact

 

Do it.

 

I like the guy who quoted Archimedes. In physics, if I can remember the subject for which I am weakest, there's something about moments. Expanding on that, a breaker bar, for instance would yield a longer and more sustained moment than shorter bursts from an impact, regardless of it's rated torque spec.

So "the right tool for the job" is maybe the easier way to describe the solution here. And an impact ain't the right tool all the time, even if it is rated for one billion torques.

Anyway, that's all you get from me in this... moment. Hahaha.