I've used both the Makita 6911HDW and the Snap-On CT-350 cordless impact
guns. Both of them are pretty nice, but the Snap-On has a lot more
torque. Using a torque wrench, I tightened a lug bolt to various torques,
then tried to break them loose with each of the guns. Both guns had fully
charged batteries. The Makita was able to remove a bolt torqued to 65
ft-lbs, but couldn't do one at 70. With the Snap-On, I got up to 105
ft-lbs without any problems - then I got bored and cut the test short
without finding out the Snap-On's upper limit.
The Makita is perfectly fine if you're willing to take the time to use a
breaker bar to loosen your lugs first, and it's much cheaper than the
Snap-On. But, if you're lazy (like me!) and you do a lot of wheel changes,
the additional cost of the Snap-On is worth it.
That said, I just saw a new Makita cordless impact - it's a 24 volt model,
and is supposed to be able to do 150 ft-lbs of torque. Unfortunately, the
local discount tool hut where I saw it wanted around 500 bucks for it...
Hope this helps,
Jim Ochi
jochi@ricochet.net
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