Swapped from impact to hand tools for timing covers and never looking back

I spent years zipping off timing covers with my Milwaukee impact and kept snapping bolts on GM 3.8s. After the third one in a row last year I finally tried a simple 1/4 inch ratchet and torque wrench. Haven't broken a single bolt since and the extra 5 minutes saves me an hour of drilling and extracting. Anyone else go back to hand tools for certain jobs?

3 comments

3 Comments

king.aaron29d ago

Yeah man that supercharged 3800 was a nightmare for stripping stuff. The aluminum on those blocks is soft as butter and the impact just hammers it into submission. What really changed my mind was doing a water pump on a 3.4L Camaro where I broke two bolts before even getting the old pump off. Now I don't even grab the impact for anything with less than half inch threads. Even for suspension work I've started using a hand ratchet to break things loose first, then the impact to spin them out. That extra 30 seconds of hand turning saves you from that sick feeling when you hear the snap. The real trick I learned is to use a torque wrench for the final tighten on everything now. My old beam style one from Harbor Freight has paid for itself ten times over just in saved bolts.

sam_thomas29d ago

My old man had a 2002 Grand Prix GTP with the supercharged 3800. We did the timing chain cover gasket twice in one summer because we kept overtorquing everything with the impact. The second time I just used a beam style torque wrench and a flex head ratchet. Took maybe 10 minutes longer but we never had to do that job again. I still use my 1/2 inch impact for lug nuts and suspension stuff but anything with aluminum threads or plastic covers gets the hand treatment now. Its crazy how much faster a simple ratchet is when you aren't drilling out broken bolts every other job.

the_oscar26d ago

Is stripping out a few bolts really that big of a deal that we all need to switch to beam torque wrenches? I've been using impacts on everything for years and maybe I've snapped one or two bolts, but it's usually my own fault for rushing. Feels like people overthink this stuff when a simple hand ratchet does the job fine.