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Open ended Ratchet spanners! WOW!
ashg - 2/9/14 at 05:05 PM

at donington on the weekend there was a new trader called Kraftwerk tools, its the first time i have heard of them. Apparently they are Swiss made and well established as a quality tool brand like snapon etc in the rest of europe. they looked pretty well made and have a lifetime warranty even on the moving parts.

got chatting to them and they loaned us some tools we liked the look of to have a play with over the weekend, when were doing the bertini conversion.

any way. to get to the point one of the bits they lent us were a set of open ended ratchet spanners. I didn't even know such a thing existed! I have closed ring ratchet spanners but these are something else! all the times I couldn't get a ring ratchet spanner on a bolt! and they have gone and solved it!


Slimy38 - 2/9/14 at 05:25 PM

Is it just me or do they look like they might round off rusty nuts quite quickly?

samjc - 2/9/14 at 05:30 PM

Clever idea but have to agree with slimy38 if you were to tackle a siezed nut youd round it off. Wouldnt mind a go and being proven wrong.

steve m - 2/9/14 at 05:35 PM

Seems a bit pointless to me, why not just put a socket in the whole with a bar ??

bigfoot4616 - 2/9/14 at 05:44 PM

what if the hole is not there or smaller. they have it so you can see how it works.

don't think they are meant for undoing seized/very tight nuts.

i can think of several jobs on the car where they would make things easier, tighten most of the way with one then do the final nip up with a normal spanner.

jollygreengiant - 2/9/14 at 05:50 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Slimy38
Is it just me or do they look like they might round off rusty nuts quite quickly?


Firstly, they are NOT designed to "break" a nut. So they would not "round " off a nut. Further, IF a nut was 'that' tight to spin off the thread that it 'rounded' the nut then surely, before you re-fitted, you would clean the bolt/stud and then fit a NEW nut.

This type off tool has been around for years (I remember 'Snap-On' having them back in the 1990's) and they were good at what they did for speed undoing of doing-up in awkward places where getting socket to was difficult and they had a matching size ring on the other end to break the nut seal with, then flip to ratchet O/E and speed the nut off. personally I couldn't justify the price at the time with frequency of use. However since that time CAD designers have had more say in designing and building cars with little thought to "servicing" issues, so I suspect that in reality they might be a little more useful now in proper "garage" operations.


JMHO.

JGG

scudderfish - 2/9/14 at 06:20 PM

How much are they?

neilp1 - 2/9/14 at 07:09 PM

Draper do them as well

jeffw - 2/9/14 at 07:43 PM

http://www.workshopping.co.uk/product/draper-expert-8-piece-draper-expert-hi-torq-metric-flexible-head-double-ratcheting-combination-spanner-set/07034 /

Slimy38 - 2/9/14 at 08:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by jollygreengiant
Firstly, they are NOT designed to "break" a nut. So they would not "round " off a nut. Further, IF a nut was 'that' tight to spin off the thread that it 'rounded' the nut then surely, before you re-fitted, you would clean the bolt/stud and then fit a NEW nut.



Agreed, if you used a standard spanner to crack it then this to wind it off then it could be quite useful. And yes, it would be a brave person to reuse a fixing that took more than a 'normal' amount of effort to remove.

I think they'd be safe for 'good' mechanics, but the average Kwik s**t spanner monkey would render either the spanner or the fixing unusable in a few seconds.

britishtrident - 2/9/14 at 08:55 PM

As much use as a toilet seat hinge in a convent.

When was the last time anybody here used an open ended spanner except on a trackrod end?

Andi - 2/9/14 at 08:58 PM

See various
http://www.workshopping.co.uk/shop.php?search=flexible+head&x=0&y=0&sec=search

Andi

gingerprince - 2/9/14 at 10:16 PM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
As much use as a toilet seat hinge in a convent.

When was the last time anybody here used an open ended spanner except on a trackrod end?


Nut and bolt holding sprocket adaptor to prop flange on a BEC. Not enough clearance to get a ring spanner engine side.

GreigM - 3/9/14 at 07:44 AM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
When was the last time anybody here used an open ended spanner except on a trackrod end?

This. I have a set, find them not very useful - can't get any meaningful torque applied....I find that if the bolt is loose enough to work with these, then its loose enough for my fingers to do a better job.

mcerd1 - 3/9/14 at 08:18 AM

quote:
Originally posted by GreigM
....I have a set, find them not very useful - can't get any meaningful torque applied....I find that if the bolt is loose enough to work with these, then its loose enough for my fingers to do a better job.

^^ what he said

the best you can hope from them is they save you a few seconds a bolt, but even then you can't use them to apply any decent torque to loosen or tighten

the ratchet in the ring end is a bit more useful, but even then you shouldn't really use them on anything that needs a big torque to crack nuts or tighten things if you want the spanners to last...

coyoteboy - 3/9/14 at 11:51 AM

quote:

When was the last time anybody here used an open ended spanner except on a trackrod end?


Couple of weeks ago - couldn't get a ring in due to bolt head being too close to the chassis rail - removing it meant I had to crack it with a ring and then screw it out with an open ender 1 flat at a time, then twist it the last bit of the way (and that's having dropped the engine a bit to give more room).

I do agree with the above though, it won't round if you use the right tools - crack it with a ring, undo it with this. The number of folk you see using the wrong tools for the job is spectacular.

scudderfish - 3/9/14 at 06:44 PM

Would have useful to work on this bugger :-


chris-g - 5/9/14 at 10:58 AM

My Uncle recently did a job on his 1996 Mk3 Polo where he had to replace to power steering fluid transfer pipes on the steering rack. One of the banjo bolts was inclined backwards towards the subframe and was a pig to get out and replace. Only a very small arc of spanner swing was possible and although he was able to get a ring spanner over the original shallow headed banjo bolt, he chose to replace it with a banjo bolt with a normal head depth because of the risk of rounding the original bolt’s head which was deteriorated due to corrosion. With a normal depth head banjo bolt fitted, a ring spanner would not fit over the head of the new banjo bolt because of insufficient clearance between it and the subframe. My uncle imagined and then searched for (but did not find at the time) an open ended ratchet spanner that would have been ideal for this job. He was delighted the other day when I informed that they did actually exist even though by then he had completed the job with a conventional open ended spanner. So, there are definitely jobs where there is insufficient clearance to get a ring spanner (or ratcheting ring spanner) over the head of a bolt or nut and where restricted spanner swing calls for a ratchet solution. They are expensive but when you need them you really need them!

mcerd1 - 5/9/14 at 12:14 PM

^^ but if you can do it with a normal open ended spanner then you didn't really need the fancy ratchet one

also you can presumably only use them one way round for the ratchet bit to function meaning you need space for about 60° of arc on the spanner to make it work (ie. to get from one flat on the nut/bolt to the next)

with a normal open end spanner its the same except that the end is angled so you can flip it over every part turn of the bolt - so you can work with only space for a ~30° arc - although it takes ages this way its still means you get into tighter spaces with a bog standard open end spanner !

(this is how open end spanners achieve the same ranges of movement that bi-hex rings and sockets can)

[Edited on 5/9/2014 by mcerd1]