grouch
Active member
I bought a '96 Ram 1500 a few months back. Evidently the shop that worked on it had Magilla Gorilla working and he liked to use impact wrenches. To work on the brakes I had to use a 5 foot cheater pipe and breaker bar to break 19 of the lug nuts loose so my impact could get them off. The one exception was a nut that shattered several sockets and extraction tools until I finally cut the stud and nut off. The threads were warped on the nuts so they had to be replaced. I still have a jerk to the left when I brake so I'm going to replace the ball joints. The lug nuts were nothing compared to the axle nuts. I got a 43MM impact socket and tried everything I could to get them off. Yes, a 1 11/16 socket will normally work but it has a little slop. The 43MM fits like a glove. When you have a jackstand for a brace and a 9 foot section of driveshaft for a cheater pipe and are jumping on it, you don't want slop.
I finally decided to let a shop break it loose. Most wouldn't do it but I found one. His 1/2 and 3/4 drive impact wrenches just bounced like my tools did. However, they dug out their 1 inch impact for older REALLY heavy equipment and hit it with that. A couple of shattered sockets, but about 20 seconds of hammering and the nuts came off. I don't trust the thread on the nuts so new ones are waiting for the front end rebuild.
I mentioned this in another forum and someone posted this.
I finally decided to let a shop break it loose. Most wouldn't do it but I found one. His 1/2 and 3/4 drive impact wrenches just bounced like my tools did. However, they dug out their 1 inch impact for older REALLY heavy equipment and hit it with that. A couple of shattered sockets, but about 20 seconds of hammering and the nuts came off. I don't trust the thread on the nuts so new ones are waiting for the front end rebuild.
I mentioned this in another forum and someone posted this.