Best impact driver?

[haaank]

Which do you guys use?

I'm anticipating a knuckle rebuild on my fzj80 and will be picking up an impact driver, question is: which one?

I'm typically a corded vs battery operated guy, and I want to toss it into my kit while in the sticks. And even here I lean towards a corded driver coupled with an inverter.

So, tell me what you use:

Brand:

Model:




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Ducky's Dad]

Depends on what kind of torque you need. I have an old corded Makita 145 lb/ft that is perfect for truck lugs without a torque stick or torque wrench. Also have a Dewalt 18V at 300 lb/ft. It's a beast, but amazing performance for a cordless tool. Dewalt offered single and dual chargers with with cig lighter plugs, but they can be hard to find. I have one and it works great in the boonies. If you go with cordless, stick with NiCad batteries rather than L-Ion. The L-I will overheat and quit suddenly under heavy loads, while the NiCads just keep going until they are depleted.

 

[thethePete]

There is no substitute for pneumatic.
Ingersol Rand 231C. The standard in impact guns. Can be used as a hammer in a pinch. 625lb/ft. Will run off a smallish compressor in a pinch. Dirt cheap. Under $150. It's the gun any professional mechanic worth his salt started with, and the gun many oldschoolers still use.

Electric will never produce the same breakaway torque consistently. Also, heat/penetrating fluid and a big breaker bar will get you further. I'm a professional mechanic and I use a Mac Tools AW050. It's a composite bodied pro-grade gun, 1250lb/ft breakaway torque. There are still many times when I have to use my 24" breaker bar. Sometimes there's no replacement for leverage.

 

[zelatore]

Milwaukee M18 Fuel 1/2. Arguably the best on the market - popular with pros and home users. Air is great and no doubt will always have it's place, but once you get used to not having to drag that hose around it's hard to go back. Plus the M18 line is huge - there's pretty much every tool you can imagine, and battery life is really good. I use M18 tools for work (not the 1/2 impact as I don't normally need that much power in my job) and since I work out of my van I have a small inverter powering a charger and keep batteries topped up that way in the field. Unless I'm running something like a grinder cutting steel (continuous draw) batteries last seemingly forever.
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Do some google searches on it. Hard to find anybody who has any real negatives. Some people might have another preference, but few will say it's not a top-flight tool.
Here's a start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qn2r0nSVW4
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As always, when the topic is tools I'll refer you to garagejournal.com More tool talk there than you can shake a stick at, and by people who know their stuff.

 

[zelatore]

If you go with cordless, stick with NiCad batteries rather than L-Ion. The L-I will overheat and quit suddenly under heavy loads, while the NiCads just keep going until they are depleted.

I would disagree with this. I've run both and the performance of the LI stuff is so far above the NiCad it's not even in the same league. I have overloaded an LI impact and it did stop. For a few seconds. Then it was right back to work. I'll never go back to NiCad after having used LI.

 

[Ducky's Dad]

I have lots of both battery types. L-I is lighter, but I get better performance out of my NiCads. Running lags into concrete with the Dewalt 1/2" impact, I get much better performance out of the NiCads without switching batteries every few minutes. I like the L-Is on 1/4" impacts because of the weight difference.

 

[thethePete]

FWIW, my brother has an M18 bit driver and drill, and he says they do not compare to his Makita stuff he uses for work. He recieved the Millwaukee stuff as a Christmas gift, he said it's adequate for hobbiest use, but that the battery life is not as good as his pro-grade Makita stuff (there's two lines, the white consumer stuff and the blue pro-grade stuff, and there is a big difference) He's used his Makita stuff for over 7 years professionally, every day. Batteries still last forever, charge in 20 minutes, and his tools just won't die. Depending on what you're asking of this stuff, I'd consider looking at Makita pro-grade, or even DeWalt (I've had decent success with my DeWalt equipment but it's not as good as the Makita stuff, and the batteries don't last as long for sure)

Also: Keep in mind, an impact for driving screws/lag bolts in construction is not even close to one to be used for automotive work. Electric impacts aren't good for much more than wheel removal (sometimes), and engine work in automotive. If you're rebuilding a vehicle I would highly encourage you to look at the Ingersol Rand 231C I suggested earlier, and a small compressor. It will save you a lot of heartache, and the compressor can run other cheap airtools that will help you out.

 

[Kadowampus]

Milwaukee M18 Fuel 1/2. Arguably the best on the market - popular with pros and home users. Air is great and no doubt will always have it's place, but once you get used to not having to drag that hose around it's hard to go back. Plus the M18 line is huge - there's pretty much every tool you can imagine, and battery life is really good. I use M18 tools for work (not the 1/2 impact as I don't normally need that much power in my job) and since I work out of my van I have a small inverter powering a charger and keep batteries topped up that way in the field. Unless I'm running something like a grinder cutting steel (continuous draw) batteries last seemingly forever.
.
Do some google searches on it. Hard to find anybody who has any real negatives. Some people might have another preference, but few will say it's not a top-flight tool.
Here's a start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qn2r0nSVW4
.
As always, when the topic is tools I'll refer you to garagejournal.com More tool talk there than you can shake a stick at, and by people who know their stuff.

i just bought one of these and it is by far the best/most powerful impact I've ever used. I work as an industrial mechanic and this beats the 1/2" drive snap-on pneumatic impact wrenches we have. And u have the added benefit of it being cordless which is killer for roadside and field repairs.

 

[Ducky's Dad]

All other things being equal, I'd use Makita for everything, then Milwaukee, then Dewalt. I switched from Makita to Dewalt because Dewalt is a better value, easier to find, greater variety of tools, and everything in their 18V line is backward compatible for batteries. I can use any 18V battery that Dewalt has ever made, and in a pinch I can even run my 18V tools on their 12V and 14.4V batteries (with reduced performance). The Dewalt system gives me more flexibility than the others, but if I were buying just a cordless 1/2" impact, it would probably be the Milwaukee. I have about about nine different battery systems, all with their proprietary chargers, and that's just stupid. I needed to standardize on one system and the Dewalt 18V (a few years ago) was just the ticket. Hitachi makes great tools too, but not readily available around here.

 

[zelatore]

I've had Dewalt, Makita, and now Milwaukee. I use them daily for work with a small impact being used almost constantly but I have a full range of stuff that gets used regularly including 1/2" hammer drill, sawzall, circular saw, jig saw, 4" grinder, oscillating multi-tool, etc all on the M18 platform. I can't say enough good things about the Milwaukee stuff. And since I'm self-employed I pay for all my own stuff - so yeah...I like to get my money's worth.
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My Dewalt stuff was OK but nothing great. The Makita was good, but finally died after years of use and they just don't offer the range of products Milwaukee has which was the tipping point when I decided to change platforms a couple years ago.
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Each industry seems to have it's preference. Contractors seem to like yellow (Dewalt). Mechanics like Snappy and IR, and to a lesser extent Makita. Wood workers seem to like Bosch. But for all around goodness I don't have any complaints with red (Milwaukee).
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It should probably be said you won't go wrong with any of the big-name tools - whether you like red, yellow, or blue. But if you're going to invest in a given battery platform it makes sense to see what other tools you think you'll eventually want and if they are available in the platform of your choice. With something like 50 individual tools available on the M18 platform I found it easy to go with Red.

 

[thethePete]

^ Nailed it. For the average hobbiest user, any colour will do, just buy pro-grade to avoid disappointment. My brother's M18 stuff is not the "Fuel" line, so I suspect those may perform slightly better. And as you mentioned, the lineup that Millwaukee has right now isn't matched by anyone else on the market. I'd say figure out what you intend to use your tools for, and buy a set that will allow you to expand into those needs as time goes by. Also worth noting that Millwaukee seems to have the greatest flexibility with their tool bundles. That is to say, they have 3 or 4 different 5 tool bundles with different configurations, whereas the others don't.

I'm sorry to the above poster, but I refuse to believe your M18 is as good as a snap on 1/2" pneumatic. I've used the Mac electric impact and it can't hold a candle. Certainly not with repeatable performance. I'm a fan of Mac Tools, and I love my AW050, but as much as that's a top-tier gun, the Snap-on metal body gun still beats it punch for punch.