I am sure we have all broken some tools. so lets discuss what we broke and why it broke. lets see the first tool i broke was my husky 1/2" drive ratchet. i was tightning up one of the bolts for the lower control arm on my car and had my cheater bar on it. while aplying constant pressure the ratchet slipped a tooth. now it wont stay in one direction and jams often. 2nd tool would prolly be readymixs big screwdriver. i bent it while trying to remove a head bolt. kinda weird i figured my wrench would have bent before the beefy screwdriver. 3rd tool. this was just a few days ago i was helping a couple friends try to remove a 2" ball hitch from a parts car. had a forged pipewrench on the ball and a cresent on the nut. w/ some cheater bars. yah just look at the pics lol. after it all w/ liquid wrench and a torch. the hitch was still on teh car.
I broke a vice once. The part that is right above the crank broke. Cheater bars are bad for tools, but good for getting the job done.
^ that reminds me, i broke a vice too. i wash trying to pound out a lower control arm bushing by squezing it out into a socket. and well kept tightning the vice until it snapped. the part the threads into the back of the vice to tighten it, broke off(hard to explain). so that vice was shot.
Here's mine: 1/2" craftsman ratchet. Upull in the middle of winter, trying to get a rear hub off a loyale, coulen't get the axle nut off. at first, we couldn't keep the hub from spinning, eventually we just put the wheel on it, and pushed the car off the stands (don't tell anyone). when we got that done, we put a huge peice of exhaust pipe we found on the ground (about the size that jeffy is using above) over the ratchet as a cheater, and started leaning, all 3 of us sitting on it.......the guts of the ratchet exploded, there was no longer anywhere to put the socket on.....and certainly no mechanism to actually ratchet. good times
I have broken at least 3 rachets in my time. All from using cheater bars. I learened to use a breaker bar, or something non racheting for my future high pressure hijinks.
