Anyone use an Impact Driver to remove wheel bolts?

 

And more specifically, anyone use a DeWalt DCF887?

 

Just bought a 887 Impact driver, not mega money at £85 but as it uses the same batteries (5amp) as my drill/driver it made sense. All well and good but its performance is nowhere near my expectations. It claims to be packing 205Nm so it should whip out my 120Nm Karoq wheel bolts without breaking a sweat, yes?

 

The reality is somewhat underwhelming, I have to back the bolts off to 105Nm to have the DeWalt stand any chance and tightening back onto the wheel its limit is around 100Nm.

 

I appreciate the 887 is not a 'Impact Wrench' and not designed for serious garage work but I'd have thought it could manage the odd wheel change.......I've seen some YouTube stuff where similar DeWalt kit does the job and more.

 

Any opinions please guys?

 

 

Breaking torque is not the same as tightening torque so it will probably require more work to undo the bolts.  As for the power of the driver, have you tried different capacity batteries?  The Ryobi ones seem to be rated for different torques with different batteries.  Could be the bigger packs are a better counter weight? I dunno, could be a load of  !"£$%^&&*(

They don't have the oomph for removing or tightening the nuts and really only speed up the spinning of the bolt out. A spider wrench is cheaper and just as quick. If you have already invested in cordless tools and don't need to get extra batteries then a torque gun is what you need but expensive still if you're not going to get the use out it.

 

I have the Dewalt 887 and is an absolute beast for driving in screws, its built up a lots of things in my house. Using 1/4" adaptors to use on 1/2" sockets isn't going to transfer all of the torque available anyway, you should have bought a proper wrench, not a driver.

 

You should have bought the 889. It weighs a ton so its not ideal for breaking small nuts and bolts loose, but wheel nuts, hub nuts and things that are generally tight as a Nuns lady garden, its awesome.

 

You can pick them up bare for £140-£160

Edited 8 October, 20196 yr by SuperbTWM

10 hours ago, MarkyG82 said:

Could be the bigger packs are a better counter weight? I dunno, could be a load of  !"£$%^&&*(

 

The smaller 2ah packs will have 5 cells in series and the cells may be rated for 20 amps continuous load, the 4 ah pack has 2 sets of 5 cells in series with each other giving the same voltage with the potential for 40 amps.

 

This is why some may give a different rating depending on the battery. If I put my smaller pack on my circular saw and cut a large timber you notice the saw slowing down as the voltage dips, you don't get that with the big 4ah and 5ah packs unless you really give it some abuse

 

Sounds like wrong tool for the job. Get the breaker bar out.