The milwaukee 9072-20, the king of electric impact wrenches.

[ryan roopnarine]

Long story short, my e34 is parked somewhere where an acid (or other strong cleaner) is used to clean the concrete, without my knowledge. Last year, at this time, i had to drill out one of the wheel lugs (and replace 3 others, after having to hammer a 16mm socket onto them to get them off. this was after a powerful 3/8 inch air tool was brought onto the scene. I attempted this year with a breaker bar, a 4 foot pipe, and an assistant, with the deja-vu esque experience of seeing 3 of the bolts start to round. this is to say nothing of the pb blaster that was consumed. I decided to bite the bullet and rent the best rated 1/2 inch electric impact (from amazon reviews) there was, after seeing that one of the bolts looked like it was going to need to be drilled out. This cost me $24, but if it was better than the dewalt, I would be happy.

Enter the milwaukee 9072-20, with a claimed 300+ ftlb of torque. oh, and in case i didn't mention it previously, the 220 ftlb harbor freight/china mart special electric that was given to me did f*ck all to help me, additionally the popular dewalt 1/2 electric fared similarly.

Find problem bolt.
Apply snap-on 17mm impact socket
turn milwaukee up to 5
check to make sure that the motor was turning CCW instead of CW (this is the one failing of the milwaukee, it has an unmarked swinging arm to determine rotation direction)
Give the bolt some of Dat Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-ap-ap-ap-ap for about eleven seconds
Not a single F*ck was given by the milwaukee, which spat it out and caused it to fly off.


If you are in the market for an electric impact, you could do a lot worse. This unit costs about 188$ usd locally, but I'm seriously considering buying one, it could seriously increase the number of repair tasks I could do without a helper.

PS: this is a corded unit.

[Dave M]

I have a similarly rated (~300 ft/lb) corded, but couldn't resist the Snap On 6850 cordless rated at 620 ft/lb breakaway torque. Found one in very good condition on the bay for around $350 and now use it for everything from lug nuts to suspension to crank bolts. No more 4 ft breakers (well, less of them) and no more compressor rentals.............. I love it.

Dave

[Tiger]

Air is always the best and most reliable... try running that battery impact all day long on one battery. But for most people... good battery impact gun is enough fo do most job and a whole lot easier than managing hose, compressor, gun, and oil... I am tempted to buy a Dewalt one... since I have a whole set of Dewalt 18V kit.

[genphreak]

Sounds damn fine to me Ryan.... like heaven on a cord. Glad to know you've found a good friend, and that those lonely hours spent in and around the e34 suspension will now only be counted in minutes. I'm jealous!

[ryan roopnarine]

my purpose in making this post was not to assert that the aforementioned milwaukee was the most powerful impact on the market, or that it was a solution for everything, but that there existed a low to moderately priced impact that actually did what it claimed on the box. So often (especially with cheap chinese impacts) the rated torques are simply wishful thinking (or may be correct for specific individual units from a production line, and woefully optimistic on others). The dewalt corded unit was an utter disappointment to me, I couldn't hold that much of a grudge against the harbor freight unit because one knows what to expect when they buy something from there. Alls I am saying is that if you want to buy a non-snap on impact wrench that will actually do what it claims, more likely than not, this particular milwaukee will meet your needs.