Cordless impact wrench question

[rickyw]

I treated myself to one of these a few weeks back as I have a few on going jobs and I thought it would make life easier. The one I went for is the Sealey CP2450 as on paper it looked good.

Anyway, I went to use it in anger yesterday & I found it struggled to remove wheel nuts & would not even look at the crankshaft pulley bolt I was trying to undo.

Anyone got experience of these?

[maniac0796]

Batterys fully charged?

Use a snap on one at work. Struggles with the main bolt for crankshaft pulleys, but will undo most other stuff.

[heebeegeetee]

Yeah i'd say battery. I've got a Clarke 24v 2 battery job, and find i will have to change the battery if i'm using it hard throughout the day.

[premmington]

Personally I cannot see cordless battery powered impact wrenches lasting long in a garage environment. The £330 Milwaukee HDI18HIW32 18V model is the highest powered battery wrench on the market with a stalled power rating of 610nm, which is about 2/3rds of the power of a modern 1/2" air powered twin hammer impact wrench. Ingersoll rand 19.5V and Dewalt 36V models only have 440nm ish. All Snap On battery guns are made by Ingersoll Rand, difference being the Snap On ones are red and cost twice as much!



http://www.remmington.plus.com

[rickyw]

The battery issue had crossed my mind. The charger charges the battery in 1 Hr, but I don't know if its a timed charger and charges for 1 Hr regardless, so maybe not fully charging.

Also, I thought the battery may need a few charge/discharge cycles to give full capacity.

Sealey quote the tool as delivering a torque of 410 LB/FT. The crankshaft nut I'm trying to undo is torqued to 80LB/FT

I would love a snap on / Ingersoll Rand, but this is purely for my 'tinkering time'

[OctyVrs]

The £50 Clarke cew1000 is surprisingly good (plug in 240v rather than battery though). Just finding them in stock is hard work sometimes. Serviceable with spare parts via Clarke too. Closer to air power than most battery ones and variable speed unlike a lot of battery ones.

Edit just re-read you bought one already, cancel this

Edited by OctyVrs on Sunday 6th February 20:07

[Deva Link]

rickyw said:

The crankshaft nut I'm trying to undo is torqued to 80LB/FT

That's only the same as wheelnuts, isn't it?

[Mr2Mike]

rickyw said:

Sealey quote the tool as delivering a torque of 410 LB/FT. The crankshaft nut I'm trying to undo is torqued to 80LB/FT

It may be thread-locked, many crank pulley bolts are.

I have a 24v Clarke impact wrench and it's pretty poor and struggles with tight wheel nuts. The performance is better right after a full charge, but drops away quickly (even though the batteries last quite a long time). It's truly pitiful compared to my ancient 1/2" drive air impact wrench.

[rickyw]

I have emailed Sealey tech and addressed my issues. They believe it should do the tasks I asked of it and may require testing on their torque rig.

[Deva Link]

How do you know it's torques to 80lb/ft?

It's not ususual for crankshaft bolts to be extremely difficult to remove.

[rickyw]

Because that's what it was torqued to last time. I know that through time the bolt may become a little tighter, but not by that much. The fact that the unit will not remove wheel nuts that were removed and re torqued a week previously is a bit suspicious esp when the torque level is well within the tool's stated spec.

[rickyw]

Done a quick check. With a fully charged battery it will undo a bolt torqued up to 140 LB/FT but will not undo 150 LB/FT. The tool is rated at 410 FT/LB.

[Mr2Mike]

rickyw said:

Done a quick check. With a fully charged battery it will undo a bolt torqued up to 140 LB/FT but will not undo 150 LB/FT. The tool is rated at 410 FT/LB.

Note that is the peak torque rating, not sustained. Are you using a proper 6 point impact socket directly on the output of the tool, or are you using any extensions? Also I'm sure you realise that it always takes more torque to undo a fastener than was applied when it was tightened...

[rickyw]

Proper 6 point socket used, no extensions.

I emailed the tech guy at Sealey with this and he reckons it should undo 150lb/ft with no issues. Currently in a box awaiting uplift.

[madbadger]

Silly question - Are you charging the battery properly?

You put the battery in the charger and the green light comes on. Then you press the button for a second and it turns red.

On green it is just tricle charging. Red is the full charge.

Apologies if this is blindingly obvious but one of my colleagues refuses to read instructions and assumed it was charging as soon as the light came on.

[rickyw]

Yep, pressing the button when I insert the battery.

[madbadger]

Worth checking!

We have the same model.

It easily removed a load of rusted on bolts on a 20 year old caster mould assembly. None of them would undo by hand

[b16a2_VTi]

I've got one of those clarke jobbies over christmas, its a cracking bit of kit and comes with two batteries, I left the each of the batteries on charge over night.

I've used it at two trackdays purly for wheel nuts and it struggled getting one off as it was over tourqued, providing nutsare tourqed correctly you shouldn't have too much bother.

Saves me a wholeroad of time when changing wheels etc at trackdays, also it won't match have dent air powered guns.

[voicey]

OctyVrs said:

The £50 Clarke cew1000 is surprisingly good (plug in 240v rather than battery though).

I have one of these and am yet to come across something it wont undo.

[rickyw]

madbadger said:

Worth checking!

We have the same model.

It easily removed a load of rusted on bolts on a 20 year old caster mould assembly. None of them would undo by hand

No chance my gun would do that! How do you generally find it in use?