Busting Myths about Torque Limiting Extensions: 31 Different Quick Dyno Tests

[Music] welcome back to the torque test channel into our four science series yes we're finally doing torque sticks ladies and gentlemen three different sources ranging in price slightly dimensionally as well but all the same purpose what is that purpose to limit torque from your impact gun usually for the sake of quickly installing wheel lug nuts essentially on this end you might have 1000 foot pounds worth of impact wrench but on this end you have a lug nut that you shouldn't be tightening much over let's say 100 foot-pounds so you use a 100 foot-pound torque stick to bring it into that ballpark without damaging anything with full beams to put the vehicle back on the ground then finish with a torque wrench these only work with impact wrenches linear increasing torque like when applied with a torque wrench won't utilize this limiting design in any capacity and why is that well these range and torque ratings via small to big diameters on the length of the extension which act as a torsion bar impact blows are delivered less and less efficiently down the extension length the smaller the extension is in simple terms imagine a person is hanging from a rope if you turn that rope gradually with your own hands like you would be with a wrench that person will start to spin at the end but if you have a plate sort of like attached to the side of that rope and you hit it with a hammer to try to turn that rope it would sort of just spring back at you in between blows and not really do much but do these extensions do a good job of that do one spot from harbor freight versus amazon versus the snap-on tool truck make a difference are old ones worn out and therefore not useful anymore if they work does using cordless impacts or guns with different impacts per minute ruin that prospect and basically over two dozen separate quick tests to try and answer every one of your questions that we've seen down in the comments so far one of the reasons this took us so long is we wanted to shoot these with a high-speed camera to see if one side of the extension really does move while the other doesn't after a certain level of torque but ultimately we couldn't swing four to six grand for a kronos or similar let us know if you're in socal and have one or have one for sale and want to work out something all right so in rare fashion with our dyno set up with the nut side out like your lug nut would be on a car and now freshly calibrated to a torque wrench for a change this thing always surprises us how closely it can match a torque wrench when desired let's start throwing some ugga duggas at these torque sticks most instructions mention you impact for a second or two basically until you see the socket's progress load so in many of our tests that's what you'll see us doing but stay tuned for lots of different runs and impacts we do all sorts of things coming up up first is the 80 foot pound stick from the 60 dollar harbor freight set using an old school ingersoll rand gun that these types of tools are rumored to be calibrated for so let's see that so 72 foot pounds so far 82 now with same impacting time and 77. so here's astro now 80 foot pound torque stick that's from a 89 set 75 and 82. here's snap-on a new 80-foot-pound stick that costs as much as 52 a piece and their five-piece set is 265 so about 530 as a comparable 10-piece set 85 81 and 79. now here's an old one with about three years of occasional shop use 78 and 88 so no real change between new and used so far they seem to be limiting torque and even putting that torque in an expected range but also so far on the best gun for this sort of thing as rumor has it so here's a cordless impact in the form of an m18 mid torque harbor freight is 82 astro 71. and 78 snap-on 82 and 76. now for a much bigger gun the most powerful air gun we've tested thus far the thor let's see that [Applause] so after a full second closer to 100 than 80 let's dial it back to setting two out of three which instructions from multiple brands also recommend playing with [Applause] so 81 to 84 now sort of what we want to see [Applause] and we get the same from astro and snap-on as well but let's face it not everyone's going to have a precise or consistent trigger finger or heck even care to pay attention to that socket progress to dial in that trigger time so here's what the dyno graph of a five whole second unadulterated impacting time looks like now versus the 80 foot pound target [Applause] 131 so if you fell asleep on the gun it still might not be ruining a lug stud but still not great here's the harbor freight [Applause] 131 foot pounds again about the same and here's the astro 105 now and that did seem to consistently put out that low number we tried it a few times now for the milwaukee mid torque with 5 second runs that's 121 so somehow similar results for my gun much less powerful than the thor in their respective settings and harbor freight's the same story and the astro sort of as well so let's try a 150 foot-pound stick from the harbor freight the highest sort of passenger vehicle common lug nut specification [Applause] so 149 to 161 foot pounds in about one and a half seconds remember that's more than any gun made in five seconds with the 80 foot-pound stick here's the astra 150 foot-pound stick [Applause] looks like 135 to 140 due to being a little less trigger time so now that we've sort of just winged it and eyeballed enough runs on these sticks we're going to get into the method brands recommend doing for this to dial these things in but in order to save you from an additional 15 to 20 or so brand tests that you don't need to watch we can so far summarize some findings finding number one brands don't seem to matter a whole lot yes we saw some difference on longer dugas but for the most part as long as you recognize what brand you're buying and you understand a warranty difference these tools seem to be playing with the same set of rules so go out and save a buck if you can our second finding was we still haven't determined if they are accurate but they do seem to be somewhat consistent if your goal is to not destroy yours or your customers wheel stud or aluminum wheel these do seem to limit torque in a predictable manner number three higher rated sticks do transfer more torque in this test it took maybe 0.3 to 0.4 seconds more time in our testing to see that socket slow down but during that half of second the 150 foot-pound stick gained more torque than the 80 foot-pound saw and the whole five seconds and for number four do they work on cordless that's yet to be seen more testing is needed to help answer that we're going to use the recommended process for those of you without a dino like us the marking method we're going to use a 100 foot-pound torque stick and torque this nut to 100 foot-pounds then make some marks on the nut and the area around the nut which in your case would probably be a wheel then use the thor gun first we'll impact on this thing the amount we normally would and see if the lines sort of match up indicating a good match at the end [Applause] in this case they do and you can turn the gauge on to see where we're at which is 94 95 foot-pounds not bad here's that again [Applause] again about the same amount of impact time we've been doing so far the lines line up and 103 foot-pounds so let's see with the milwaukee now the milwaukee we noticed after practicing needs less trigger time to hit this mark but the milwaukee makes less power what's going on to figure that out we really need to do a baseline test on these tools something we've ignored up until now how much are these making less their extensions here's the thor no extension just on that socket same trigger time 214 foot-pounds now for the milwaukee so the milwaukee is already pretty close to the ranges we've been testing without a torque stick which means the extension is not really being asked to do a whole lot and yet with less trigger time it's making the same beans what what gives time to settle this cordless question with a real high torque the maco 20 volt which is quite a bit more powerful than the thor in this forward direction here's this baseline run trying to keep it short like we needed to do with the m18 and its line matching runs now here it is with that 100 foot-pound torque stick yeah the lines don't match it's 33 percent over its target and it was an even shorter trigger pull but we saw this time and time again so time to try these out on some actual lug nuts and lug studs 100 foot pound and 150 foot-pound rated ones first with the thor on the 100. those lines seem to line up remember this is an imperfect science we're sort of just doing what you might fun fact a 100 foot pound stick may not remove a 150 foot-pound lug nut which sort of makes sense so let's throw that 150 stick on now [Applause] and here's the macro cordless apologize for this camera angle the other camera's battery died so you have the reason you can't see the mark is it's at three o'clock torque sticks just do not like high torques we tried a rigid and a dewalt on the same process and had similar results what about swapping in a shallow socket though can switching up the mass on the end change things so on the whole we found this to slightly increase torque transfer contrary to our understanding now let's see what the dyno curve of just ripping a 80 foot-pound stick for 10 seconds on a high torque looks like 253 yeah a lot more than 80. now for the thor highest setting same thing [Applause] 219 with a slower curve as well sort of more margin for error in those first few seconds on an air tool all right last test we found on episodes past that regular old impact extensions also plateau quite a bit themselves acting like torque limiting extensions and the longer the extension the more dramatic that loss so can we just use an even longer extension to sort of do the same thing here's a 10 inch impact extension 2 inches longer than these torque sticks so far [Applause] so it does limit torque but at least from our tests less consistently so and if you wanted an 80 or 100 foot pound extension equivalent that'd be over a foot 14 inches long so here's this dyno curve versus the torque sticks from both guns [Applause] 308 foot pounds and quite a steep curve not much margin for error there in snapping off a lug stud so what have we learned how would we summarize our findings i know we probably left out something you wanted to see which we can include if we ever get our hands on a high speed camera and do another episode but overall do torque limiting extensions work well not if you have a cordless impact in our opinion we've tried various impacts we've gotten our hands on since shooting this footage and the consistency is all over the place with air impacts do they work well yes they limit torque they prevent you from damaging stuff for the most part are they accurate well that depends on how all out you're willing to go with line matching tests to dial in your specific impact its settings and socket weight perhaps even use a different torque stick rating depending on what those settings are but overall i have to say no accuracy is hitting a specific mark right precision is hitting something consistently i wouldn't say any given stick will hit a specific mark but they are within a window of preciseness that should allow you to do what you're supposed to be doing i mean you're not zipping wheels on with these things and driving the car off the lot right right i mean if you are i hope this video hasn't given you even more ammo to ignore the necessity of using a torque wrench the thing that really at the end of the day should be used regardless of how you put a wheel on or how fast you do it we appreciate you joining us for this for science episode suggest more down in the comments and thanks as always for watching [Music]

Channel: Torque Test Channel

Views: 215,084

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Id: HGxWMOP6deo

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022