Sheldon Brown said:Werehatrack said:
Quoted message said:Use a socket.
Tom Ace said:
Did everyone who said to use a socket just not see
where he said "Socket wrenches are too thick" ?
_Some_ socket wrenches are too thick.
Better quality 6-point 3/8" drive sockets generally have thin enough
walls to fit.
Agreed.
If the crank has normal extrator threads, just about any 3/8" drive
15mm socket worth owning is likely to fit in the recess without a
problem. I just checked; only one of of my dozen or so 3/8-drive 15mm
sockets would have a problem getting in there, and it's an older
Craftsman; the newer ones all were small enough, including the
Stanleys from Wal-mart. (Those just *barely* fit, but I didn't have
to force them at all.)
Quoted message said:Cheap sockets have thicker walls to make up for the lower quality steel.
And a thin wall alone isn't a reliabile indicator of quality; some of
the cheapest Asian sets have very thin walls...and they spread open
like lily blossoms when more than moderate torque is applied[1].
Quoted message said:1/2" drive sockets have thicker walls because of higher forces commonly
used with the larger sizes.
12 point sockets have thicker walls, but I'm not sure why.
Not always true. Snap-On's 12-point sockets, among others, are the
same OD as their 6-point, or at least this is the case for the ones I
have. Of course, you can buy an entire set of Taiwanese sockets of
decent quality for the price of one Snap-On socket. (That an Asian
socket will be of good quality is not a given, however. There are
still plenty of good-for-nothing Chinese, Taiwanese and Indian tools
hitting the US market. OTOH, I have several Taiwanese socket sets
that have seen regular heavy use for years without breakage or even
detectable wear.)
Where a 12-point socket is made with thicker walls, the theory is that
it's needed because the thick part of the wall where the flat of the
hex is present on a 6-point is providing neded stiffness to the
unit...but that's really a false argument because the breaking point
of the socket is determined by the strength of the wall at the
*thinnest* point, not the thickest. The thinnest point, obviously, is
where the points of the hex lie. My personal experience bears this
out; I've split more 6-point sockets over the years than 12-point,
except in Snap-On where they both fail at about the same level of
strain.
[1] Another Tool Tip: The presence of a "Lifetime Guarantee"
statement on a tool's packaging isn't much of an indicator of quality
either. Back in the '80s, I used to regularly buy 40-piece socket
sets, containing both 1/4" and 3/8" drive sockets, a ratchet,
extensions, and a 1/4-to-3/8 adapter, for $2.00 from an importer
locally. They proudly proclaimed that they had a "Lifetime Guarantee"
on the box. Pfui. I stripped that baloney off before I put them out
for sale, and I put a sign on them that told the truth. It said these
were crummy sockets that were barely good enough to get you out of
trouble once or twice in the event of a minor breakdown, and their
principal virtue was that they were so cheap that if the whole set got
stolen, it was no great loss. I sold them for five bucks. Nobody
ever complained about them, and we sold *lots* of them. A competitor
was selling the exact same set for $18, and we regularly heard
customers commenting that they wouldn't buy anything from that place
again because they sold [censored]. Well, so did I, but the difference was
that I was up-front about the nature of the item...and people didn't
have a problem with that.
--
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