450nm impact wrench 240v-$25

[disco stu]

So I was in Bunnings, and noticed an Ozito impact wrench for $25. Looking on the box it said 450nm of torque!! (more than our cars). Turned out to be 240v powered, which suited me perfect. It looks like they are a special promo item, and on special to clear them out so I'm guessing not many more would be left around. I grabbed another for a mate this afternoon from Warrawong Bunnings (but $30 instead), and it looked like they had a few more there, for anyone in the wollongong region who are interested.

I'm hoping this makes meny jobs a lot easier. Broke my breaker bar recently undoing the CV to wheel hub bolt on my camry, I would like to think 450nm would do that one! Undoing harmonic balancer bolts will hopefully no longer be such a nightmare also.

[NFT5]

I bought one of those cheap 240v electric rattle guns a few years ago, based on similar torque claims and for a similar purpose as you've outlined.


Complete piece of garbage and really don't know why it still occupies space in a drawer.


That said, the battery electric Hitachi impact that I more recently bought is a gem.

[disco stu]

Was it the Ozito do you know? I'm really hoping this one performs better than that then. I was hoping to avoid battery powered as it would be rarely used, and the vast majority of the time it won't be able to fit in the space needed to undo bots, so simple ratchet is what will get used mostly.

I'm keen to test it out on something so I'll know based on what you said. Might try the camry front hub

[NFT5]

Not Ozito, but I haven't been much impressed with their tools either. In a shop I learned long ago to only buy quality and this thing was not that. Still, it only cost about $30 so it will just go in the bin when I have a need for the space.





To be honest the Hitachi has all the grunt necessary to do wheel and hub nuts and is smaller and lighter.

[disco stu]

Hmmm. Well, mine didn't come in a case, and it had 50w more, so it must be good-right??
Haven't tried it out yet, will update when I have

You say your smaller ones have more torque?

[NFT5]

Definitely. The battery impact (top left in photo) will undo a correctly torqued wheel nut with ease. The 240v one can't move it. Specs for the Hitachi say 305Nm.

The Hitachi drill (lower left) feels like it has more torque than my 240v Makita. Specs say 136Nm for the Hitachi drill.


I paid about $600 for the drill and impact combo set, which is a lot more than what you're looking at, but with 6Ah batteries, 20 minute fast charger and the ease of battery power I find myself using them more and more, just to speed things up. Much quicker then using spanners or ratchets when dismantling and reassembling. The impact has 4 torque settings so works for smaller fasteners too.

[disco stu]

Battery powered does tempt me, not worrying about cords etc. I just know that if I'm not using it regularly like my drill then it always seems to be out of juice when I need it for some reason. The cost of those sounds fairly high, but then they will last

I just tested my one out on the camry wheel hub bolt. One of the tightest bolts I've come across I think. After breaking my breaker bar last time on it I made a point of not doing it up quite as tight, but it was still fairly heaved on with a long bar attached. My povo impact wrench managed it without too much trouble. Took a few goes to get it moving, but this was 10s of impacting it, rather than 10min of heaving, bending bars, scraping the paint etc.

I'm happy with that. After what you said I was expecting it to be crap and that it wouldn't do it at all. If it handles that fine, then it will have no trouble with wheel nuts at all (unless its been at the tire shop, and they seem to use the strongest tools they can find and then keep pounding away on those nuts until they just wont move any further). This thing will make life a lot easier with rusty suspension parts and exhausts if I can get it in there

[NFT5]

That's good. I was concerned that the one you have might be as useless as the one that I bought.


Lithium batteries aren't like the old Ni-Cads or even NiMH. They hold charge pretty well.



But, if it does the job then all good. You'll appreciate the effort saving.

[Wazzap]

Battery powered does tempt me, not worrying about cords etc. I just know that if I'm not using it regularly like my drill then it always seems to be out of juice when I need it for some reason. The cost of those sounds fairly high, but then they will last

One big benefit of the battery ones is you can chuck them in the car, so if you're ever out and need to change a wheel or something you can use the impact rather than a wheel brace. I've got a Ryobi one+ impact wrench, cost $160 (without a battery, but already have the battery cause I have a few other ryobi one+ tools) and it's been awesome, so much quicker and easier than ratchets or breaker bars. I also bought a torque extension bar so I can use the impact wrench with the torque extension bar to do up the wheel nuts, and it won't over tighten them (the bar absorbs the impacts, so if you buy a 110Nm bar it will only ever tighten the bolt to 110Nm even if you hold the impact gun on!).

And as NFT5 says the lithium batteries hold their charge for ages - the impact lives in my car with a battery in it, and I've check it out 6 months later and it's still had full charge. Also have a lithium jump start pack that over 12mths after it's last charge still had enough juice to start a car with a dead battery a few times.

[disco stu]

That's interesting about the torque bars-I think tire shops need to invest in a few of those! If you can't tell I've been stuck not able to undo the wheel nuts before, searching through the bush for a rock or lump of wood to get them undone. I always undo and retighten these days

I'm nice and familiar with Lithium batteries. Amazing jumps in technology, bar the fire issue! My issue is not the batteries fault, its me not keeping up with charging for rarely used tools. If I just bought a whole line of tools that ran off the same batteries it wouldn't be an issue though

I always repack my drills with lithium cells, bizzarely enough its cheaper to use lithiums in there than to repack them with NiMH. Nicad are cheap but useless as far as capacity goes. I really need to switch over to a lithium based drill though so I'm not needing to repack the batteries. I bought an aldi drill pack as the cells were bargain priced for samsung cells, but I've thought about just buying an aldi drill to go with it. Worries me that there isn't any cell balancing in those packs, off topic, but keen to hear if anyone knows of issues with the aldi batteries and cells getting out of balance

[Wazzap]

That's interesting about the torque bars-I think tire shops need to invest in a few of those! If you can't tell I've been stuck not able to undo the wheel nuts before, searching through the bush for a rock or lump of wood to get them undone. I always undo and retighten these days

Yeah for sure, they're not that expensive and a shop/technician could get a set that would do basically any car they see, would also be quicker than setting the torque on a torque wrench (which is likely why they just rip em on tight rather than doing it properly). I've also been bitten by overtightened wheel nuts and a crap factory brace (in my commodore) that partly rounded off the nut so it couldn't get a grip on it any more.

I'm nice and familiar with Lithium batteries. Amazing jumps in technology, bar the fire issue! My issue is not the batteries fault, its me not keeping up with charging for rarely used tools. If I just bought a whole line of tools that ran off the same batteries it wouldn't be an issue though

Fire is only really an issue with them if the battery packs themselves are pierced, and having taken apart a ryobi battery that refused to charge any more I can tell you that you'd have to be really trying to pierce it! I also keep the impact gun/battery/socket/torque bar in a hard case in the car so nothing will damage any of it, and it's all in one place ready to go if needed. And yes agree on the issue with charging batteries for infrequently used tools, main reason I went to Ryobi one+ was so all of my battery tools use the same batteries, I usually keep one in the charger (it cuts off so it won't over charge), a couple in use, and the one in the impact wrench - if I could remember I'd swap the one in the impact with a fresh charged battery regularly just to ensure it's always charged, but as mentioned even 6+ months later it still holds charge (and I keep a 1/2" breaker bar in the car, so worst case scenario I just go back to manual if the battery is flat).

[disco stu]

One day I'll start swapping everything over, just need an excess of funds.....

Interesting story about lithiums and fire. I do casual teaching, and one day last year I had to take someones sport class. Something was getting thrown around in the back of the bus that looked like pop tart packet, which i ignored-kids eat that sort of crap all the time. It then got thrown to one of the kids near me, and I straight away recognised it as a lithium cell out of a tablet or similar, with some nice bend marks in it. Told the kid who had it not to do anything with it, just hold onto it and not bend it or anythin (there was my mistake, should have grabbed it myself).
Next thing I know he's saying "its getting hot, ITS GETTING HOT!!" and throws it onto the floor of the bus.

I'm sitting there just hoping that it won't actually catch fire, will just get a bit hot, when-poof-out pours the smoke!!

Bus pulls over, kids pile out, girl has asthma attack-twice!! Fun and games. Typical bloody teenagers!!

[NFT5]

Geez, good thing you mentioned that.



I'll make sure I don't throw those Lithium batteries on the floor of a bus.

[Ian H]

I bought a 12v rattle gun from the local RV store for about $60. I plug it in to the anderson on the car and it will undo wheel nuts which an extension bar and a lot of cursing won't shift. I do them up the same way but only to a certain degree and then finish of with my torque wrench. Both live in the 3rd seat wheel well.