When you’re working on a car or anything mechanical that requires the use of socket wrenches, you don’t start off turning your nuts or bolts with a ratchet. That is
, unless you like to ruin ratchets. I ruined three before I found out what a “breaker bar” is.
A breaker bar is what you use to get things started, then for speed you switch to a ratchet.
One of my breaker bars needed a new pin. It was at least 40 years old and had turned who knows how many nuts. Its previous owner had even used a hammer on it. I can tell because there are lots of identical, small, curved dents in the handle.
If the bolts were that tight, he should have used a striking wrench.
Anyway, the pin was so worn and bent that the drive plug jiggled in all directions, and the spring-loaded detent ball that is supposed to hold it in position barely touched it. It absolutely needed a new pin.
The pin was flared on either side to prevent it from working out, so I filed one end down and drove it partway out. Had I gone all the way, the drive plug would have come off and the tiny detent ball would have shot out into the dark recesses of my tool shed, never to be seen again.
I used inside calipers to gauge the diameter of the hole, then measured the calipers with a micrometer. From my cache of salvaged hardware
, I got an old bolt that had an unthreaded portion at least as long as the old pin, and was only .010 inches bigger in diameter. I clamped it in my bench vise, and used strips of coarse emery paper to polish it down to fit. I wasn’t very precise about cutting it to length, just eyed it up. Then I drove it in, simultaneously forcing the old pin the rest of the way out. Lastly, I peened the ends so it would stay put.
I didn’t have to do all that. Since the tool was Craftsman brand, I could have simply gone to Sears and taken advantage of the unconditional lifetime guarantee that Craftsman tools have. They would have exchanged it for a brand new one, and thrown the old one away. They do the same with ratchets that are returned. In the old days you could take a ratchet to them and they would rebuild it for you.
Here’s the bar ready for 40 more years.
Bottom pic is the original pin.
