Swapped from impact guns to hand ratchets for interior work after a plastic trim disaster last June

I used to zip everything with my impact gun, but after I cracked a door panel on a customer's 2019 Civic, I switched back to hand tools for anything trim-related. Has anyone else had a similar 'learn the hard way' moment with power tools on delicate stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray21027d ago

Oh man, I still cringe remembering the time my impact gun turned a glovebox screw into a stripped mess.

emma_young27d ago

Jeez, was that a cheap screw or were you just sending it way too hard? I always wonder how people decide when to switch from the impact to a hand ratchet for interior stuff. Like, do you just guess and hope for the best until you hear that horrible crunching sound?

logan_schmidt27d ago

People make way too big a deal out of this. A stripped screw in a glovebox isn't structural, @emma_young. Slap a little superglue on the bit or grab a slightly bigger torx and back it out. Even if you mangle the plastic, a new trim piece is like twenty bucks at the dealer or eight from a junkyard. The only time this really matters is if you're doing something stupid like using an impact on a control arm bolt that you actually need to torque to spec.