Tuesday 24 August 2021

Tool Tuesday - The Breaker Bar

 


This week I've been swapping some wheels around on my old VW Caddy Mk2, well actually on two Caddy's, my one on the road, and my off road spares donor vehicle! It's common for tyre companies or garages to fit wheels using a compressed air impact driver and as such wheel nuts can be pretty heavily over torqued and difficult to undo. The answer is the humble but incredibly useful breaker bar. A breaker bar is a long oversize bar with a socket fitting at one end so it can receive a socket wrench. They are usually none ratcheting as socket wrench ratchets aren't often capable of very high torque. My breaker bar has a 1/2" socket wrench fitting and it lives in my van with a 17mm socket on it at all times as that is the size of my wheel nuts. I also carry a 19mm and a 21mm socket with it in case I can offer help to anyone changing a wheel as these are the other two common wheel nut sizes.

They work very well and definitely make life easier than trying to use the shorter lower quality tools that are often bundled with a a small spider jack in many vehicles. 

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