I've been reading through the forums here and while there is a lot of advice on what to do when you've already broken a fastener, I thought I'd chime in with a method that I've come up with to avoid breaking the bolt/screw/whatever in the first place.I came up with this while playing motorcycle mechanic, and it hasn't failed me yet. If you feel like you're putting enough force on a fastener that you're in danger of snapping it off, STOP TWISTING. First, go through all the normal motions for freeing the threads: penetrating oil, heat, heat and ice cubes, tapping with a hammer, etc. Still stuck? Hook your impact wrench up to the air line, and back the throttling valve off completely. Now, hold the trigger and start turning the air up until the wrench just barely starts to tap. When I say barely, I mean it should sound like you're pecking on the impact wrench housing with a small screwdriver, no more. Well, maybe a little more than that for a largish fastener, but not much. Just a light pop-pop-pop with slow rotation is all you're after. Shoot the penetrating oil to the bolt/screw/whatever, put the impact wrench to it, and wait. You just want to hear the impact wrench tapping maybe twice a second. I cannot overemphasize the idea here of going slow and being patient. Resist the urge to turn the air up, that leads to broken bolts. It can't hurt to stop periodically to apply more penetrating oil. If it's possible, use silicone sealer to build a dam around the head to hold penetrating oil on the fastener, obviously not an option on a vertical or inclined part. Generally, the more annoying it would be to get a broken bolt out of whatever hole it's hiding in the more time I'll take to set up ideal conditions. Eventually the fastener will come out. Be advised that it can take some time. My personal worst case was a case stud on a Kawasaki (steel stud, aluminum case). I had to rig the impact wrench to a stand so I could walk away from it. In that case, the stud was in a depression on the bottom of the case so I could flip the engine and leave a puddle of penetrating oil around it a quarter inch deep. It took literally a little over seven hours to work the stud out, but out it came without breaking and without tearing the threads out of the aluminum with it. I have also used this method on screws just by stacking the necessary adapters on the impact wrench to mount a quarter inch socket and using standard screwdriver bits. This method surely is not fast by any means, but it's generally faster and much less frustrating than trying to use and EZ-Out. Remember, just a very light tapping effect, no real force involved. I suppose it might be possible to fatigue a fastener into failure doing this, but I haven't had that problem yet. The only times I've had problems have been when I've gotten impatient and turned the air up too far. Use common sense on how much air to feed the impact wrench and be watchful of fluctuations in airline pressure if you're running an unregulated line out of the compressor. I know the difference I observe with my home rig (unregulated) between cut-in and cut-out on the compressor is pretty significant in terms of the force being exerted by the impact wrench when you're throttling it at the bottom edge of it's operating range. robin
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