| Facom Nut Splitter - Tool Of The Month
For the moment, let's move away from esoteric devices with limited or racing-only applications and toward the more common genre of hand tools that do-it-yourselfers and automotive enthusiasts are likely to need or want in their home shops.
But, before we even get to that, the first order of business is to declare yourself master of your garage. Install locks. Remove and relocate everything not related to cars. Throw out those old radiator hoses and that case of K-Mart oil your dad bought in 1980. Once you establish that your garage will not be filled with Big Wheels, lawn and garden supplies, and the various and sundry flotsam and jetsam family types tend to throw in there, there comes the need to equip the place for it's God-given purpose-storing and working on cars and motorcycles. Make it a comfortable place not only to work on and store cars and bikes, but also to meet with like-minded friends, watch the Speed channel and drink beer.
In addition to hand tools, we'll be looking at useful products and devices for life in the garage. But, in the realm of hand tools, we're going to eschew the cheap stuff available at the local direct-line-to-the-third-world discount store, and even those places that sell washers and dryers, too. However convenient department store tools may be, you can find them yourself. I'm here to show you what lurks beneath the surface. Toward that end, we'll be looking at hand tools that are a cut above the common, but not at the astronomic price level of what gets delivered to professional shops in $100,000 sales trucks.
Two tools companies have always impressed me with their quality for cost: Facom and SK. Facom is a French-America tool company that has been around since 1918. Facom now owns SK, and both companies' product lines seem to have benefited from the relationship. The quality and durability of Facom and SK tools are, in my opinion, equal to or better than many of the tools that get delivered by those $100,000 sales trucks.
This month we're going to focus on the Facom Nut Splitter set, part number 289. Anyone who works on cars, especially those not fortunate enough to live in the southwestern United States, encounters seized fasteners. After a decade or so of life under a car tasked with salt-ridden winter driving, even the best quality nut will be a festered little chunk of insidious rust. Add dubious quality and/or overtorquing to the equation, and you've got yourself a problem. Several options present themselves for dealing with seized nuts, including penetrating oil, heat and saws. Once you've deployed every implement of destruction in your tool collection and the nut is now rounded off in addition to being inexorably seized, you're left with only one option. Split the sucker open like a dinner roll.
Now, right here we have to talk about disaster tools. Disaster tools, as the name implies, are not what you reach for to actually do a job. Disaster tools are what you reach for when the job goes horribly wrong. Nut splitters are minor disaster tools. Major disaster tools usually have to do with stripped threads, often in irreplaceable aluminum parts for irreplaceable Italian engines. Time-serts, Easy-outs, Helicoils are major disaster tools. The point is, you want to spend good money on your disaster tools. Don't cheap-out here, because they are going to save your ass, even the nut splitter set. And nothing is worse than disaster tools that don't work or that need to be fixed themselves.
The Facom nut splitter set includes two housings, one for nuts up to 10mm and a larger one for larger nuts. A special hollow-end 10mm bolt threads into the housing and drives a hardened steel cutting pin. You just slip the housing over the offending nut, position the cutting pin vertically against a flat side of the nut, and turn the bolt in using a 21mm wrench or socket. The nut will eventually split with a tortured sound: splink! It's pretty diabolical when you think about it. The whole process take minutes, a lot less time than you spent with every implement of destruction you own spread out on the shop floor with rust-laden penetrating oil dripping in your eye.
The Facom Nut Splitter set, part number 289, costs about $70. Why pay seventy bucks for this nut splitter set when you can get an offshore one for $25? Because it actually cuts the nut rather than just claiming to cut the nut. Also, because it will continue cutting nuts long after yours are zipping around that Big Racetrack in the Sky.
Facom tools can be purchased anywhere SK tools are sold. A google.com search will reveal many outlets. Also visit the website, www.ultimategarage.com.