How much torque do I really need? (Tool question)

Due to a very long distance move and the lack of space and a garage (or even driveway), I've been without tools for a while. And the lack of a project or fun car wasn't exactly an incentive either.

Time has come to do some  suspension work on the wife's daily, a 2001 Honda CR-V. Yeah, I know. Beater category. 

Since the general consensus of the Tribe seems to be that Ryobi tools are good value and liking the extended ecosystem with their shared batteries, this is what I am leaning towards.

Soooo... Which one to get? Relative cost isn't really an issue, but power and usability are. The High torque one seems like the logical one - see overkill is good, but then the size and weight seem to be an issue in some cases. Will the 600 be enough, or will I instantly regret it? Planned 'fun' car is probably going to be some generation of the answer, and there isn't that much rust here in San Diego to worry about.

Help?

Chassis rust may not be there but you'd be surprised how frequently a bushing sleeve is fused to a bolt. Go HF Hercules high torque for max output for a given dollar, Milwalkee M18 Fuel High Torque Gen 3 (more additional words incoming I'm sure) for max performance cost be dammed. This is definitely one where its best to show up to the shootout with way more weapon than you think you need. 

If price is less of a consideration, I'm in the "buy once, cry once" camp when it comes to tools and would just buy the Milwaukee. 

I have the 600 ft lb mid-torque Ryobi and haven't found a thing that it can't spin off yet. I'm sure more would be fine too. I did end up buying their most compact impact as well, just to have something lighter and smaller for smaller areas, and it's the one I usually reach for now. But if I only had one, I'd keep the bigger of the two for sure.

AMiataCalledSteve said:

I have the 600 ft lb mid-torque Ryobi and haven't found a thing that it can't spin off yet. I'm sure more would be fine too. I did end up buying their most compact impact as well, just to have something lighter and smaller for smaller areas, and it's the one I usually reach for now. But if I only had one, I'd keep the bigger of the two for sure.

I have the same one and have yet to find something it won't zip off.  My son has the Milwaukee cordless and the Ryobi has held it's own against it.  Their battery system is nice, because I can use it on my yard tools, too.  And being able to just go pick up a new tool/battery from any HD is convenient.  If you get one, make sure to get the more powerful battery designed for it.  The regular ones work, but with out the heavy duty one, you won't get as much torque.

The only thing I don't like is the battery is big and bulky.  Because of that, I also have a few of the Milwaukee M12 tools.  Specifically, their impact driver.  I find I use it the most for small screws, bolts, etc when working on a car. 

-Rob

For suspension work I much prefer air, they are so much smaller with much more power.

Even on a superduty, working with the big M18 High Torque is just too big and unweidly compared to an air impact.

I second the opinion of "buy once cry once" if you are not in the Ryobi camp already.  

I don't know how much torque the Dewalt 20V XR 1/2" makes but I've never found it lacking on anything up to and including almost everything on a rusty John Deere backhoe.  I went with the Dewalt environment and have found adapters to fit the Dewalt batteries to most of my older non Dewalt tools.  They don't seem to mind 20V if their nominal original voltage was in that approximate range.  I'm sure if I ran a 19.2 volt tool on a 20 V battery day in and day out it might shorten its life.  I haven't seen any effect though.  

I had the first 300ft lb RyobiOne Plus impact gun, and while it worked well enough for tire changes, it was lacking when I needed to work on bigger stuff, like suspension components. It started to get weak after a few years of hard use and eventually died, so I replaced it with the Ryobi One Plus HP (Part Number PBLIW01) with the 1170 ft lb rating. It's impressive. I haven't had to even use the 3rd setting yet; it usually breaks stuff off with setting 2. It also has an Auto setting, but I haven't tried that yet. It also has more torque than my air gun, so that has been relegated to living in a drawer in my tool box ever since. 

Is it as good as the Milwaukee? Probably not, but it does the job for me.  

Higher will help with that pesky Honda cranky pulley bolt when its time to do that timing belt

I'll second a few previous posters here.

Maybe Ryobi has gotten better in the last 10-15 years but my ex-BiL bought a bunch Ryobi tools when he attempted to start a plumbing business (that's part of why he's an ex-BiL) 15 years ago or so. For professional use they did not hold up at all. Batteries failed constantly and they weren't much cheaper than the Red brand on an individual basis. The tools were pretty sub-par. I would not invest in them if I had a choice. The price delta for Red isn't huge and I am more than happy with the performance and durability of the Red system.

That's my $0.02...

In reply to rdcyclist :

The One Plus line has gotten a lot better, and is a big upgrade over the older Ryobi stuff. The old blue and red Ryobi tools were absolute trash; I had a few of those back in the day and they were disposable at best. 

For a homeowner and hobbyist, the One Plus stuff is good enough. If I were wrenching for a living, I'd probably go Milwaukee or Dewalt. 

I have a rebuttal for the "buy once cry once" rule which is that Harbor Freight Hercules stuff is good enough but also cheap enough to "audition" tools that you don't know if you'll add to your "grab every time" rotation. I've been deep into the DeWalt 20v ecosystem the last couple years, but I also have an increasingly large assortment of Herculas stuff. Sometimes I buy a Hercules tool not knowing if it's something I'll use a lot, and when it is I'll go get the nice DeWalt version. and some DeWalt stuff I have and I like but I feel weird taking it to the track so I get a cheap verson for the road toolbox.

Anyway, that doesn't really answer your question except to say that a high-torque impact gun is an absolute necessity that you'll likely grab for almost every job, so starting out on the "overkill" end is probably fine on this one.

I would assume that all torque ratings on electric tools are exaggerated by at least 50%. Get as much as you can.

Tony Sestito said:

In reply to rdcyclist :

The One Plus line has gotten a lot better, and is a big upgrade over the older Ryobi stuff. The old blue and red Ryobi tools were absolute trash; I had a few of those back in the day and they were disposable at best. 

For a homeowner and hobbyist, the One Plus stuff is good enough. If I were wrenching for a living, I'd probably go Milwaukee or Dewalt. 

As I said, I went Dewalt but I do fear that they're getting Big-Box Disease.  Already Dewalt is playing games with their part numbers and sometimes, if you're not careful and read the reviews on Amazon, you wind up with a cheapened down tool.  There are several places on the web where you can verify that you're getting the top of the line of what they offer.  A lot of what the sell in HD or Lowe's has had some little cost-out tweak done to it - thinking about the nearly identical circular saw but the home improvement store had a plastic base instead of a steel one.  The same thing happened to Black and Decker years ago.  A quality tool line went South to make bean counters happy.  I don't see this as much with Milwaukee but maybe it's because I haven't paid them the same attention as the yellow tools.

First of all, thank you everyone for your input. I am in a bit of analysis paralysis mode, and the collective knowledge of the hive was sorely needed.

As AMiataCalledSteve and rob_lewis said, the 600 ft lb model seems to be more than enough for most jobs, hence the reason I was thinking the high torque one might not be worth the extra bulk and weight for my personal use case. But, so far, no one seems to have had any issues with it. 

I think the deciding vote so far was aw614's comment about the crank pulley bolt, which I had conveniently put out of my mind. Why did you have to remind me of that? 

So, keeping the choices confined to the Ryobi ecosystem to avoid extending the paralysis (unless someone has some game breaking reason not to go with the latest one plus models) seems I'll be buying the high torque one with the peace of mind it will bring.

Should I also get a 3/8 one for smaller bolts or is there no reason for it?

I have an extremely high torque 3/4" air impact that has failed on more than one occasion to bust off a Honda/Acura crank bolt and I had to resort to bigass breaker bars, cheaters and hydraulic lock to get them off. IMHO, I would not use the Honda crank pulley bolt as a metric in your decision tree...

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned but Torque Test Channel on YouTube does really good reviews on all kinds of drills and impacts. They have their own standardized testing to measure torque so you'll get an apples to apples comparison between brands. 

rdcyclist said:

I have an extremely high torque 3/4" air impact that has failed on more than one occasion to bust off a Honda/Acura crank bolt and I had to resort to bigass breaker bars, cheaters and hydraulic lock to get them off. IMHO, I would not use the Honda crank pulley bolt as a metric in your decision tree...

A $20 weighted socket makes those bolts look stupid.

- A Honda Specialist 

For Ryobi, of your battery craps out (which it will if you use it hard for awhile) it's not hard to fix. If you don't want it to crap out, make sure it's thick. I mean it. You want 2 banks of cells. Other red and yellow brands have used larger cells that can take a high amp draw. Ryobi has stuck with the smaller 18650 cells, so they shut down to prevent fires if you keep hitting them hard for a long time. So don't go skinny for your impact or yard tool Ryobi batteries! (Skinny is fine for the hot glue gun, which is amazing)

I have the older, big Milwaukee 1/2" impact (2767-20) that gets it's fair share of use for things like crank bolts, suspension parts, etc. It's never let me down, and has been well-worth the $200 I paid for it (including a 5.0ah battery). It is heavy and bulky compared to other options.

Based on how much I used the big impact, I also bought a 1/2 mid-torque M18 that's become my go-to. With a 3.0ah battery, it's much lighter and more compact for everday use. But if I had to pick one. I'd go with the biggest one in the range, regardless of brand.

I've watched quite a few videos from the torque channel, and while I found them really informative they didn't exactly help solve my dilemma, which was along the lines of "How much torque do I need to do occasional work on non rusty Japanese cars (and optionally their annoyingly stubborn crank bolts) without the tools being too cumbersome to either fit where I need them or actually use them".

Then rdcyclist made me wonder if there was even a reason to try and do the crank bolt, and Pete sent me down another rabithole and a couple more episodes of the torque channel. The hive delivers!

Of course procrastinating about how I should word the question in front of the hive meant that all President's day weekend promotions lapsed, but such is life.

To try to answer your previous question, I went for at least a year, maybe two with just my Ryobi Mid-Torque before I got the One+ 3/8" impact. It was totally fine to do most of the work that I needed to do and I was very grateful to have it almost every time I got into the garage. I eventually bought the 3/8" as more of a luxury buy - I didn't really need it but it sounded nice. It's much less powerful but also much lighter. I usually reach for it first because of that weight difference, and sometimes it can get to a bolt that I otherwise couldn't access, but usually I found I could get the big one where I needed to go with the right combo of swivels and extensions.

If you're in analysis paralysis mode, just go ahead and buy the high torque, don't worry about anything else yet. If you decide you want the little one down the line then you can get it then. The high torque Ryobi will work great and you'll be very thankful you have it.

In reply to AMiataCalledSteve :

Having a lighter and more compact option is nice.  I use my DeWalt 12v impact driver with a socket adapter (and hex-bit sockets) often for low-power tasks.  Especially if I'm working over my head.  I'm often surprised at what it can loosen up. 

I'm interested in this conversation. I used the Ryobi stuff down at Dusterbd13's place, and having any sort of power tool was kind of game changing.

Thank you all for your feedback and kicking me out of my paralysis.

Followed the majority view and just ordered the high torque 1/2 impact. The fact that HD is currently running a $179 promo with the high torque, charger and 2 hi performance batteries did help, but without you guys I wouldn't have checked today and would probably have ended up paying a lot more.

Let's hope my somewhat sensitive wrist (old motorcycle accident) won't have issues with it.

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

This is what I am hoping too. Never personally had power tools for mechanical work, only used air some times at friend's garages and at a shop I worked at. The plan was to set up full air in the garage once I managed to get a house with one, but that seems further and further away, and power tools seem to have become VERY competitive power wise.