If you're like most Mopar owners, you tend to perform most of the maintenance and upgrades on your car yourself, using your skills and tools to save a little money. And even if a job requires a tool we don't have, most of us would rather spend the money on a tool than pay a mechanic to do the job. This way, the next time we need to perform the task, we'll have both the tool and the knowledge to do it properly.
The right tools can generally make a tough job a lot easier, and this month we'll show you a unique and very useful new design from Ingersoll Rand.
No matter how many tools you have, though, chances are at some point you've been working on your Mopar and thought, Man, this would sure be easier if I had a (insert tool name here). And while there's no way most of us could afford or even house all the tools we'd like to have, there's no doubt that having the right tool for the job does make most automotive maintenance much easier. The focus of this column usually isn't tools, so much as the jobs we do with them, but we found a new tool called the Hammerhead from Ingersoll Rand that was so unique and useful we just had to tell you about it.
Like some of Ingersoll Rand's most popular products, the Hammerhead is a pneumatic impact wrench but is built differently than any other impact, with a unique 90-degree head. Designed to meet the torque criteria of an impact and size requirements of an air ratchet, the 1/2-inch drive Hammerhead we tried out is about the size and weight of a 3/8 air ratchet. But while an air ratchet is limited in terms of the power necessary to break loose tight fasteners, the Hammerhead provides nearly the torque of a 1/2-inch impact wrench, making short work of most fasteners and gaining access to tight quarters.
To really analyze this new tool from Ingersoll Rand, we took a 1/2-inch Hammerhead up to Inline Performance Specialists for some real-world testing. Working with Inline on a couple of projects, including some Cummins diesel heavy line maintenance as well as a transmission swap in our '09 Challenger, we were impressed with the versatility of the Hammerhead. This tool has remarkable torque for its size, and is lightweight, well-balanced, and easily reversible, offering the best features of both an air ratchet and an impact wrench. In fact, after using the Hammerhead we agree with Ingersoll Rand that this tool would be great for a mechanic needing a high-quality, entry-level air tool that will perform the work of both an air ratchet and impact wrench.
