rev up your engines, today I'm gonna talk about electric impact wrenches do they
work as well as air impact wrenches now I've been using air impact wrenches for
decades and decades ago I tried some of these electric impact wrenches I went
right back to the air impact wrenches they just weren't that good that was
decades ago let's see what they're like today because let's face it
air impact wrenches need an air supply to work so you need long hoses to follow
wherever you're working you need a big compressor sup like this to power them
to get the air pressure and you need a power supply of electricity to run your
compressor or one of those gasoline engines they can also run the
compressors tube of course then you need gasoline to run them on with an electric
impact wrench all you need is electricity you plug it in and away you go
now there are battery operated impact ones too I personally am NOT a fan of
the battery operated ones cause I work here in my garage I got 120 and 240
volts everywhere I don't want to deal with charging batteries seeing how long
now lasts have them wear out in the middle of the job I'm not a big fan but
if you want to buy one of those voltage is basically electrical power and the
higher the voltage the better they're generally gonna work but of course as
far as I've seen it'll make any hundred and twenty volt ones so you're plugging
into the house 120 you're gonna get a lot more power than you're gonna get out
of a little battery pack and of course as long as you got power it's not gonna
run out in the middle of the job now let's compare the weight here's the air
impact wrench alright it weighs four point seven to five
pounds now we'll see how much the electric impact wrench weighs it weighs
seven point three five pounds so it's quite a bit heavier so I'll realize the
air in pack weighs a lot less less strain on your hands less weight to
wrangle around when you're doing stuff there's a plus for the air impact wrench
and as you can see size-wise The Electric Gun is
bigger much longer the air impacts gonna fit into smaller spaces better now if
you're taking tires off and things like that you really don't care about space
so these are perfectly fine for that but if you're working in confined spaces
which is often the case in cars you're not gonna be able to fit an electric
impact where you can fit an air impact now let's talk about power you measure
it in foot-pounds of torque power rotational power does electric one is
rated at 450 foot-pounds of torque for taking nuts off and putting them back in
that's a reasonable amount of power but the air impacts they got a lot more power
y'all have more bang for your buck this is a nitro 1200 I've had it for
years called the 1200 cuz it is more than 1200 foot-pounds of reverse torque
that's a lot of power now this isn't a totally fair comparison because there's
porter-cable one this thing is like $89 this nitro was $189 costs a
lot more and of course you got heavy air compressed to the hose and all that so
you got to spend a whole bunch more money now unless you live up north
everything's rusted away and won't come off she's really not gonna need 1,200
foot-pounds of torque to take things apart no car is built that way but if
you do have rusted out old vehicles that you got to take apart a lot you're
really better with an air impact setup because they can add so much more power
but for normal use these electric contacts can often serve a good purpose
if you're working on your own car like taking off the tires take off okay get
the right socket put it on, off it comes it easily kicked off all the lug nuts
off goes the wheel, what about tough stuff like the giant axle nut here
for the CV axle well let's try it out first we'll take the cotter pin off and
you get the okay job there's enough now since this is old and rusty before you
start taking it off spray some wd-40 on it then we got a socket that fits with
the electric impact wrench on it here we go took it right off
so it took this 30 millimeter bolt right off odds are you're not gonna be taking
any bigger bolts off we're on your own car for normal usage the electric impact
wrench it's a handy relatively inexpensive tool for doing a lot of work
you don't have to buy the hose you don't have to buy the compressor and if you're
doing air tools you have to buy separate air tool for each one odds are you
already got a whole bunch of electric tools drills and stuff like that that
plug in into the wire so maybe get an electric impact wrench we're doing some
work on your car too much power is actually bad this air impact with it's
over 1200 foot-pounds of torque is almost three times this so with this
odds aren't you're not gonna over torque things you're not gonna snap bolts off
and I do have to admit when I was in a big hurry on jobs sometimes this thing
it'll break nuts and bolts right off because it's so powerful so let's power
for one it's gonna be pretty hard to snap them off , take putting the bolt back
on hey when you put it back on with the
electric one not going to be too tight then you can use your special torque
wrench to torque it to the right tightness, a lot of times if you use
an air impact wrench that'll make it too tight already we're
an electric one generally isn't gonna get it
way too tight so then you can torque it to the correct specifications on
something like an axle nut that you don't want it too tight so that the
bearings don't get squeezed and wear out too fast
sorry a little bit more about electric impact wrenches and how they might be a
good tool for you and since this mechanic money I'm giving away one of
this porter cable electric impact wrenches to have a chance to win just
place a clean non offensive comment on youtube comments below and the winner
will be chosen randomly by computer to get a nice electric air impact wrench so
you can work on your own car, so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell