My shop teacher swore by the 2-foot breaker bar on rusted lugs, and 15 years later I'm starting to think he was just lucky | Auto Mechanics - Vivisector
My shop teacher swore by the 2-foot breaker bar on rusted lugs, and 15 years later I'm starting to think he was just lucky
He pounded that into us in vo-tech back in 2009, said impact guns strip too many nuts so always break them loose by hand first. Last week I watched a kid snap a stud clean off a 2012 Civic with a 1/2 inch bar while my M18 zipped all four off without a scratch, and now I don't know what to teach the new guys. Who's right here, bar first or gun first?
Your shop teacher wasn't wrong, he was just working with the tools he had. The old impact guns guys used in 2009 were gutless compared to an M18, so yeah, you had to crack them by hand or you'd just beat the nut to death and round it off. A modern brushless gun with real torque is a different animal, but the kid who snapped that stud proves the bar has its own risk too. Teach both: gun for most stuff, hand tools when you can see the nut is already chewed up or the stud looks weak.