12v impact wrench

At 20 quid, it'll be junk.

Around £100 gets a decent one from Machine Mart - I bought one last summer and don't regret it one bit.

1. Do 12v impact wrenches have enough torque in the first place?

1. 20 quid is very cheap but after you compare it with a known brand of

1. If its sparingly used I would rather have a decent socket set. The only thing that I use an impact wrench is to remove wheels. but if they are tight an impact wrench may not work and the socket set comes out with a big bar.

The 20 quid 12 volt one is likely rather different from a cordless impact driver. It basically runs up to speed then whacks the nut in a rotary way. Not like the cordless type which can be used as a power nut spinner as well, and only starts whacking it when it gets above a certain torque.

I have one of those 12 volt ones bought from Maplin. It does what it says on the tin - undid the crank pulley bolt on my auto without any trouble. Only other way would have been to lock the crank and use a breaker bar, as it's torqued up to about 200 ft.lb.

You can put either a socket and bar or a ring spanner on that and turn the key with the end of the spanner on the chassis. That will undo the bolt.

Somehow I'd rather use my cheap impact driver.

I would have like a decent one, but for my needs and cost I ended up ordering it last night. I could spend say a £100 on a machinemart jobbie, would be tons better but I only would touch it once twice a year doing odd jobs. Most of the time I'll be using a socket on a bar but there will be times when something like this will do the job of say for example swapping out wishbones on the mk4 golf or jobs where there are really tight bolts. My only worry having never used one is it will be too agressive for some tasks where it would be best suits using ratchet/bar/socket but experience will educate me on that one.

A cheap air compressor with a big tank & a cheap pneumatic wrench will =

outlast an electric one in that environment & have more talk.

An impact driver is actually less likely to shear a bolt when undoing one. And less likely to round off the head.

I have an electric impact driver. It beats a normal screwdriver hands down for removing normal slotted woodscrews from say a door hinge where they've been painted over. It just zaps them out - whereas a hand screwdriver is more likely just to chew it up.

This 12 volt one is about the size of a mains electric drill so easy to transport and store. Unlike any decent compressor. Of course if you have a reasonably sized garage/workshop, a compressor is nice to have. Mainly for other uses.