How long will a good air impact wrench last??

Second choice is the Harbor Freight Professional model (copy of the I-R 231). This one also has good power especially considering I normally run 150 to 175 psi. This gun will easily snap 5/8" grade 8 bolts like nothing if you let it. I tend to like this one because the trigger allows you to feather the air to the motor which allows you to control the power without having to adjust anything. I have this one for about 7 years and have use it very hard without one hint of trouble other than replacing the O-ring seal on the trigger which is common in most every gun used this hard. The drive is starting to wear a bit now and I think it's time I order a couple more of these. They run about $70 normally and $50 on sale. Excellent gun for the money. Have the same style in 3/8" drive too and it's wonderful.

While I'm no fan of I-R after my last run in with them over a large compressor that was a piece of crap, I have had many people swear by their 2131 impact guns. Many good reports but if customer service from I-R for the tools is as bad as for the compressors, don't expect to hear from them at all if you do have a problem. If they could care less about a customer who dropped $9800 for a compressor, I'm sure they won't care about you loosing only $400 for an impact gun.

C-P has gone way down hill since the late 80's. I worked in a locomotive remanufacturing plant in '90/'91 and none of the C-P tools held up for nothing. The older ones seem to be good but the new ones are junk unless they changed a lot in the past few years.

Don't waste your time and money on a cheaper lower powered gun. The I-R style Harbor Freight one is cheap but works well, other cheap ones stink. If you got a lot of money to put out, go with the snappy IM5100 and you will be happy. If you don't want to dump a lot of cash, go with the H-F (I-R 231 copy) and you'll still be happy.

Managed to buy it at 50 quid.. bargain!

As for air pressure, this is something I beg to differ with a lot of people on. Some will agrue that volume of delivery is all that matter and some say that running pressure over 100 is wasted air.

The smallest hose I use for tools up to 1/2" drive is 3/8" with high flow 1/4" npt couplings. Each coupling / fitting and so forth causes friction losses in the air pressure and volume. For that reason alone, running pressure of 120 psi on a system, I'll bet that you are barely getting 90 psi, if that, that actually gets used to run the tool.

I've been running all my air tools with system pressure that varies with the compressor cycles from 150 to as high as 190 (cut out point of the engine drive on my service truck). I have yet to have one single tool in all this time fail from running higher pressure than is listed for the tools.

I can tell you for fact that when I take my same air guns into a mfg or coal plant that runs lesser system pressures that you definitely notice the loss of power and speed in the tools. I tend to take care of my air tools more so because moisture is common running off the engine drive unit. I use my own blend of air tool oil that has friction modifiers and water displacement additives in it. I run in-line filter / oilers and allow about 4 times the amount of oil into the lines as is normally used in a dry air system. I have yet to have a tool fail from water problems either.

Every one of my tool failures has been accounted for in one of three ways (in order of rank) 1- accidental drops. 2- abuse, doing more with the tool than it should have been expected to do. 3- normal wear from heavy use. The most common maintenance is to the triggers. The o-ring will only take so much and they give out, common and expected with any brand or tool type.

I've taken air motors apart that I have run for years on my high pressure systems and there no more wear on the motor parts than those I have taken apart run on normal pressure systems.

So, as far as I'm concerned, there is no real problem of running higher pressures on tools as long as the tool itself is not so crappy that it can't take the beating. I won't suggest you do this but I will say it works quite well for me.

It's>Link Mark KW's site. He visits this ytmag.com discussion site frequently. He's your answer.

Branden