Can Pliers Beat a Wrench? Knipex Pliers Wrench vs Cobra & Amazon Basics Clone

[Music] welcome back to the torque test channel we recently embarked on a journey into hand tools starting out with flare nut wrenches and boy did we see some huge range of quality and usefulness once we tried to quantify those things when it came to what appears to the average person to just be the same tool from 10 different types and brands many of you asked in that video how alternative tools someone might use to loosen a line nut might compare to traditional flare nut wrenches so today we're testing by far in a way the most suggested from the comments knipex pliers at what point do they round over fasteners how good are these compared to a wrench and other cheaper options hardness comparisons the works and we're starting here with their pliers wrench this being their seven inch and mini five inch ones these usually go for about fifty dollars a piece being german made and all because we're effectively comparing these seven inch long or so flare nut wrenches we wanted to keep it in that size range to compare apple's apples leverage and footprint size and these pliers wrenches are pretty dang popular among canipex lovers so we want to see for ourselves but that 7 inches or 180 millimeters long limit does exclude their only available as short as 10 inch raptor pliers which might be more well suited for this job but i know we don't usually have nearly a foot long to swing around on flare nuts so maybe you too our first test when we threw flare nut wrenches on here was a 30 rounded grade two nut some wrenches maxed out the threads others were not able to the pliers tested today all being able to adjust down to that new rounded size of the nut we're all able to max out those small threads as well so we're moving into the main attraction for today which is coupling nuts quite soft you wouldn't use these on anything structural or safety related but perfect for testing wrenches or pliers slipping because of that softness and because you can get them in sizes where the internal threads are larger than normal making the outside hex instead of the bolt threads the weak point which is what we need every test gets new hardware here's the seven inch pliers wrench versus a very middle of the road in our results flaring out wrench the gearwrench which you can see climbing on screen now up to 507 psi of bolt tension it is a bit of a weird one in my opinion like many of kinepex pliers you should only need to push on the top arm of the pliers which is why a jack handle works here as an extension but whether it's the smooth jaws of these things or these soft nuts we're testing here to replicate flare nuts slipping and marring sort of does happen it may look like we're sort of limp wristing these things not really trying our best to turn it or letting the arms open but that's not the case we found sometimes and this is not always the case for kinepex pliers these do like a good squeezy squeezy on the handles portion to maintain a grip which increases its score here from 320 up to 396 psi when squeezed by hand which is usually not required or helpful with other knipex pliers keep in mind this is just the first test more data that changes things coming ahead the stubby five inch pliers wrench here is next these work in much the same way but smaller thinner jaws and shorter arms for less leverage and less contact patch to prevent that slipping and it suffers for that bit less as well only making 170 before we could no longer get any more um out of it and that includes by hand with a tighter grip even again on a new hex point but another kinepex is joining the group today and to try and pump up those numbers they're seven inch cobra pliers this example being about thirty three dollars these are stupidly popular and for good reason we use them too but this is a new pair just for the science aspect of things this category is often called water pump pliers these things put kinepix on the map in our opinion when it comes to well-designed and thought-out specialty pliers the variety where you don't need to squeeze the two arms with a death grip in order to maintain a bite while turning because when i went to buy cobra pliers on amazon i saw them advertising another much cheaper set made by amazon imagine that i felt it was almost too good to pass up to see how good or bad these could be as well so we're throwing them into the mix yes these are amazon basics pliers that have come out in the past year this whole set which also includes a 10 inch pair was 21 and its design appears down to the button spring heavily let's say inspired by the canipex cobra almost like carbohy icon's new pliers wrenches recently released and we just found out about them let us know if you'd like to see those compared in a future video amazonbasics is not exactly known for their hand tools most of which are the flavor you'd send with your daughter off to college it appears to me but these look like to be some more of a serious effort so chinese crv versus german-made alloy steel is on the menu today let's see how the half-inch coupling nut fares and up first here we have the cobra pair these cobra pliers you can definitely feel them bite whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for you probably depends on if you're reusing the fastener but pushing down on just the top handle it is confidence inspiring and like many pliers types these sort of work up to a point where they suddenly don't the rounding over the nut making enough new slop to unlock the handle grip which didn't improve after that after repeated attempts we were surprised by that again it may look like we're allowing the handles to open but it's just the result of the teeth slipping here's another test we did with these pretty much the same thing though 365 here now here's the amazon basics brand pliers i still can't believe that's a thing the basics work in much the same way unsurprisingly having made what appears to be a carbon copy of that cobra the teeth bite decently well into the fastener and only the top arm of the pliers need to be pushed down upon to increase its grip and rotate this one is able to climb up to 394 about matching or just surpassing the real cobra pliers before just continually rounding this coupling nut now let me temper your surprise at these results by saying this is just the first size so far some developments to follow but so far the amazon generic version sort of works and the pliers wrenches they can make some headway as long as you're gripping on them on this size a nut otherwise a pair like the cobra pliers is just going to pass it up taking off something chewed up like soft metal or flare nut more easily here's the larger coupling nut size now we use sae sizes on these tests because that's what this hardware type and sizes we need for this stuff can be found in the gearwrench flare nut made up to 615 psi on the same setup so let's see how the pliers wrench does you can see it sometimes wants to spread the jaws on you just sort of snug up on that bottom arm again and it works pretty good while definitely leaving its mark the pliers wrench does up its score quite a bit eventually topping the gearwrench flare nut wrench once it sort of fits its corner of the jaws against one of the flats turning this one by hand didn't yield any extra though let's see if we can get some redemption for the 5-inch model these will certainly fit into more places but the thin jaws while probably good for other tight tasks don't do as many favors here after trying another groove position on the pliers it was able to climb up to 370. still better percentage-wise than its previous performance but yeah definitely leaving its mark shown here now for the cobra pliers these pliers can on occasion and often are just super impressive as often is the case with multi-locking position pliers some sizes of these things are perfect for its setting and others may just be in between two settings and not perfect a 9 16 hex was painter for this tool and it was able to climb up to way up to in bolt tension above the other wrench pliers and the flare nut wrench heck nearly all the flare nut wrenches we tested proving the theory that pliers can at least decent ones take off a soft flare nut as good or better than a typical wrench can at times now let's see the amazon look-alikes if they can do the same the amazon players also did pretty well climbing up in the numbers to eventually surpass the gearwrench like the other seven-inch models but they did slip resulting in some lost material that made subsequent attempts at increasing this number and not see much progress so this is what things look like on the ranking so far all these seven inch pliers did quite well outshining an average flare nut wrench but the cobra pliers beat every flare nut wrench we've tested outside of the snap-on on the 916 size pretty impressive so let's touch briefly on some weird stuff we saw on hardness then total these up the plier wrenches are shocking similar hardness to a wrench about 46 which is coincidentally the same hardness as the average of wrenches from our flare knot episode makes sense has a smooth jaw that is supposed to act like a wrench the cobra pliers are much harder we saw readings only in the mid 50s 56 or so quite hard but for something with teeth that are supposed to bite into things and could easily be worn down over time otherwise there's a lot of logic to that the amazon basics which is advertised as drop forged chrome vanadium some perplexing stuff going on we saw around 54 on the bottom jaw okay looking good and 41 low 40s on the top jaw for the larger size wrench as well heck on all their wrenches is there a logic to this the handle side you're pressing down on being hard and the receiving clamping side being soft makes for a better grip considering these are supposed to be a carbon copy of the cobras i imagine yeah i'm thinking it was more of a forging heat treating process issue and considering there's almost a 100 chance no one from amazon or their factory is watching this i'm gonna go ahead and say they done messed up sorry guys who knows if these jaws will wear unevenly or do other weird things as a result down the road but you have to hand it to them they didn't suck today let's take a look at the results and see that though totaling the bolt tension each tool achieved today that's 1122 for the gearwrench flare nut wrench 1106 for the kinepax pliers wrench 549 for the mini pliers probably not made for high torque scenarios but we wanted to see for ourselves 1062 for the amazon basics and 1249 for the cobra pliers putting the cobra into first just using a standard average wrench and second followed closely by seven inch wrench pliers hopefully kinetics make a seven inch long raptor pliers sometime soon so we can compare apples to apples those let us know if you want to see that so there you have it it may have looked at times like we let these pliers slip today or could have turned them a little bit further honestly looking at the footage it looks that way to me but we really cranked on these things by hand and otherwise in multiple tests without much better luck than shown here the five inch mini wrench pliers use them on some small nuts and bolts that need a tourney tourney like you might expect from them seven inch wrench pliers pretty close to or sometimes better than your average flare nut wrench less likely to rough up what you're working on but may require a full hand grip rather than just pushing down on the top handle still a pretty cool design though if you ask me amazon basics hard to deny the value they do what they are advertising but also some funky hardness maybe an indication that corners are being cut at this price point but just turning some plumbing or the like probably works fine cobra pliers they might rough up the thing you're turning but if that thing is already buggered up and you plan to replace it and just need it out along with maybe the vice grips we tested last time these match your best some of the best equivalent options from wrenches you have for this sort of task good stuff appreciate you joining us for this one click subscribe to catch our next hand tool episode we're working on now should be a good one thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Torque Test Channel

Views: 196,975

Keywords:

Id: kCy_yITvRNM

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 15 2022