paulengr

I have the better grade Dewalt corded 11 A version and the Milwaukee fuel cordless. Hands down the little and much lighter Dewalt runs rings around the Milwaukee. If I did it again and I could only buy one, I’d get the corded. But take for instance yesterday where I needed to grind off some rusted bolts and do some sheet metal modifications on a starter I was rebuilding. No idea where the nearest receptacle is and didn’t care. I did everything with the Milwaukee. Now if I had to grind out welds all shift or do a big 1/2” plate bevel or strip paint, it’s the Dewalt all the way. So it depends on what you need to do. If the cord is convenient or it’s a big job, I grab the corded. Otherwise I slap the battery in and go to town. We’ve got some Dewalt 20V Max too. The Milwaukee fuel version does a lot better. It doesn’t stall out nearly as easy. But it’s hard to stall the corded Dewalt. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

New batteries often act like they have a charge when they don't. That's why the instructions usually say to charge them for several hours (overnight) before the first use. It might look "full" but it's not. And if the battery is super low charge you run the risk of cell reversal with full charging current. This is where for some reason one of the cells (1.4 V each) suddenly and permanently reverses poparity. The safest way to charge truly dead batteries is trickle charging. Maybe if it sees under a certain voltage the charger goes straight to trickle mode which would be a steady light. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

To start every line will have a drill/driver and a circular saw. Look beyond those because at $50-100 per battery you don't want to own too many different batteries, although there is nothing wrong with lots of batteries. Do you see yourself doing lots of carpentry? Finish or rough? Plumbing? Electrical? Some lines don't have great support for certain things. Like a PEX expander/crimper if you foresee doing lots of plumbing in awkward spaces where running copper might not be the best plan. Or doing lots of concrete and brick drilling. Or turning wrenches on a lot of large (1"+) bolts. Or having a good demolition saw (aka Sawzall). Or good lighting. Each of the professional lines has its strong suits. For instance as mentioned Festool has some awesome wood working tools but Dewalt does too and is considerably more common. For what you've said so far you can't go wrong with Dewalt or Makita but Dewalt will be lower cost. I would never consider Milwaukee M12 as your main tool line. What it's goid for is light weight "every day" tools. So if you need a drill/driver, fine. Even a mini demolition saw that's not so mini. It has a circular saw that will go to town on 2x4 and 2x6 but not a common 4x4 where even a corded saw does that. They have the shortest compact impact wrench. It has a band saw but the throat limits you to under 1". Fine for water lines but not DWV. Decent lighting options but short battery life. Eventually you need a good larger circular saw, demolition saw, drill/driver that can do concrete and that's where M12 falls down. This is why M12 is a good secondary tool line. Starting out though I'm not sure this would not be a bad first choice if you have access to larger tools or maybe some older stuff. Going the other way if you buy into a large set with 3-5 tools now in saw Dewalt 20 V line then later down the road buy the small light Milwaukee M12 drill you won't take such a big hit to the pocket the moment you find yourself having to buy a bigger or more specialized tool and getting stuck buying batteries too. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Pretty much any high nickel filler is the trick. Use lots of passes depending on thickness and grind out any defects. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's easy to beat tool truck markups. Can't do it with Matco but for instance Williams is Snap on without the Snap on logo. Proto/Blackhawk and Facom are MAC minus the logo. These are industrial brands typically sold through large industrial distributors and some automotive distributors. I have a 1/2" Blackhawk impact socket set from 30 years ago. They are much thinner and tighter tolerances than the HF set that I have. Back then I lived in the boonies several states away where the local automotive supply was the tool store in town other than K-Mart, no Wal-Mart at that time. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

I think we have a couple tools in a closet at work but no batteries or charger so they're basically junk. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

As far as digital it holds its calibration better but still just a click type. The most accurate torque wrenches are the bending beam types but they’re awkward to use. Another good alternative though by far for automotive is a torque stick. You just use them like an extension on a medium torque impact wrench and stop when the socket stops turning. This is what most auto techs use on lug nuts. All digital and click type mechanical torque wrenches should be calibrated about every 1000 uses. We have both cheap and expensive ones in our assembly shop and the price doesn’t make much difference. Beyond that head on over to boltscience.com and start reading. Also IAEA magazine. What you will quickly find out that’s sort of obvious is essentially measuring torque is the wrong thing and not an accurate measurement of fastener tightness but it’s one way to get more consistent results, along with thread lubricant like Never-Seez and making sure that the bolt fills the hole as tightly as possible, no more 1/4-20s in a 1/2” hole. And to just toss any and all helical spring washers aka split washers aka although completely incorrectly “lock” washers and avoid them completely in the future. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

T-stak system is cheaper than toughsystem. The boxes (LxW) are smaller. The seals aren't quite as substantial. And if you have the mounts for it Toughsystem can be more like a drawer system where T-Stak is a stack so to get to the bottom box you have to move the others. But I didn't spend $300+ on the dolly. I just have the bottom box/dolly which is under $100 so personally I stack say a drill, impact wrench and sockets, maybe a parts organizer, a tote bin, and put my general use tool bag in the bin along with job related materials and wheel the whole thing to the job site. The bottom box has multiple bags of items like wire nuts, cable ties, a very full splice and termination bag (I do high voltage work), rubber lineman gloves, pry bars, files, extension cord, and charger. It's like having half my truck with me saving about 4 trips. The bottom box is also a bench seat and if you put a couple boxes back on top, a work bench. As far as the seals go Toughsystem looks at home with an excavation contractor where T-Stak looks like it's meant for inside guys...both keep your tools dry and latches and hinges probably break just as easy but Toughsystem is going to be a little more abuse tolerant. I did consider the Milwaukee Packout when I jumped into Toughsystem. But there were three problems with it. First it was very expensive and not competitive at all when it came out. That has changed. Second it was rare even online. I even thought twice about Toughsystem for that reason alone. HD only had it in clearance aisles in Raleigh. But even Toughsystem is somewhat rare and the HDs in Raleigh don't carry it now. Instead they are overloaded with the crappy house brand version and T-Stak. As usual Lowe's is pathetic with only T-Stak and only recently in Craftsman badging and neither Toughsystem nor Packout. That should tell you what SBD themselves thinks of T-Stak...its so it can color coordinate tool boxes when it sits in the garage and holds tools that never get worn. A few Northerns now carry about half of the Packout stuff in their bigger stores. Third the bumpers on Packout make the boxes very small inside relatively speaking. What I like is the bags connect too (no tote solution needed) and they have half size boxes although the compartments in them look very limited. Packout has potential where SBD has largely dropped the ball on new stuff for Toughsystem and allowed the marketing to slip to the point that it's a mail order thing at best now at least across most of the Carolinas and Virginia, on a system that I think still kicks you know what when it comes right down to it on all of them. So I might have to shell out for Packout if SBD continues to try to kill it off. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

I haven’t seen much difference. Brushes don’t like dirt but brushless electronics have problems too. You make it sound like you’ll be working on shovels in Fort Mac. Those are all Torits which isn’t that bad. But basically with most dust collectors you use an impact to remove a bunch of sheet metal screws then take a knife and cut and pull all the bags out. Once those are gone it’s actually a fairly clean job putting new ones back in. So the impact doesn’t see much. That’s odd. At least in the States in pretty much any mine you can usually get in the door as a laborer in a contract crew doing say cleaning crews. But once you learn your way around, opportunities to move up come up all the time. Even heavily unionized places like West Virginia are very easy to move up in if you show the desire and capability. All I’m suggesting is look at the platform. At $100+ for most lithium ion batteries the tools often go for less than that as bare tools. So all of your investment is in batteries. So what you don’t want to have is a few brand A, a few brand B, etc. Look at the platform first then get the tool within that platform. M12 is kind of designed as light duty secondary tools for professional use so you can’t get the heavy duty tools compared to the M18 platform. Weight isn’t really an issue. Think of for instance the 2 Ah Dewalt batteries that are no heavier than the M12s. Haven’t seen problems with Ridgid except you get more vibration off the tools. They’re just rougher ergonomics wise. And the platform is very, very small. But the price is very good. I have to supply everything up to 2” sockets. You can get up to 2” impacts in a 1/2” drive. We have some 3/4” in the crew but we just use the 1/2” to 3/4” bushing style adapters. Milwaukee has the 1400 ft-lb impact in both 1/2 and 3/4 versions, both hog ring and pin detent. We haven’t had problems breaking 1/2” sockets. We routinely work on 250-10,000 HP motors and the base bolts often need that kind of torque. We have Dewalt 20V, Porter Cable, and Milwaukee M12 and M18 in our crew. I upgraded to M18 when I started on this crew moving away from my old Hitachi stuff. There are a couple old M28s in the tool crib but we don’t have batteries anymore. Two of the guys used a tool trade in deal to switch to M18. The great specs and weight on the torque wrenches are a great selling point but the biggest one for me is M18 also runs a vacuum, drill, grinder, sawzall, band saw, stand and clip lights, saber saw, and cold saw. Dewalt 20V is close to that same long list of tools. Dewalt 12 V is kind of a joke (maybe Atomic revives it?). M12 has a lot of depth too but for instance they only have the mini sawzall and a bandsaw that realistically can’t get over about 1”. No grinder or cold saw and the vacuum is a ridiculous dust buster kind of thing. But on the other hand some of the lights are actually nicer and there are some unique items like the boroscope. So when evaluating the platform if all I did was electrician work or maybe say automotive mechanic, M12 might not do all that bad. But since we also do mechanical work and a lot of really big electrical work, M12 just doesn’t cover that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not sure about Canada but all tools are pretty good dust wise but brushless should theoretically hold up better. Mining is tough on everything. But consider this. Mid torque (150-250 ft-lbs) is about what you can realistically do by hand. As in throwing your full weight on an 18" wrench at say 150 lbs. gets you to 225 ft-lbs. You will find practically you can still do things with hand wrenches the impact won't touch without using techniques like double wrenching or a 24" breaker bar but you're pushing limits here. At 200+ ft-lbs you will tend to shear off bolts and nuts that are under 3/8". This is where it's nice to have a smaller impact driver (eliminates carrying a drill too) or impact only. I carry one with my 3/8 and 1/4 sockets separate from 1/2". This is for run of the mill fasteners. Then when you step up to 3/4" sockets when you're at typically 1-1/4" or larger nut you need to up the torque. Also it's mining...there are plenty of situations where corrosion is a serious problem. At that point you can go old school with breaker bars, cheaters (pipe), slugging wrenches, large size long handle ratchets, or the modern approach is to step up to high torque at 400+ ft-lbs. This is where you should think about step up options. At 1400 ft-lbs of breaking torque and a price of around $250 Milwaukee is hands down the wrench of choice. Nobody else has anything close right now. And it saves you $100 if you can buy the bare tool and not invest in another set of batteries and charger. And it's still 1/2" so you can use it with your 1/2" sockets until you have to step up to 3/4 or 1" just due to availability. So I'd look at the options on the battery platform. This eliminates the Ridgid outright. Might make sense to keep the Dewalt investment until it dies but if you're going to all new, Milwaukee makes the most sense. In terms of grinders and other tools you will quickly accumulate Dewalt and Milwaukee serve you well but again Richie is just too limited. So when picking a battery platform look at the overall picture, not just the tool you need now but others you will need as well. This kind of usually cuts it down to Makita (especially for linemen), Dewalt, or Milwaukee for mechanics, plumbers, and electricians. Carpenters have a lot more options. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Basics like impact sockets are OK. It's positioning. At one time Craftsman was a premium brand at a midrange price. Sears converted it into a cheap house brand. SBD has several brands (Stanley, Black and Decker, Craftsman, Dewalt, Porter Cable, etc., etc.). They've always kind of positioned things like a good/better/best with Dewalt as premium. People seem to want the old Craftsman discount premium line but the problem with this is that it cannabalizes Dewalt sales if you can buy the Dewalt in red instead of yellow. And they paid good money for the name so by definition it has to be marketed as a midrange brand. That being said why buy Craftsman if you can afford Dewalt and you're on your tools every day. If you're a homeowner though and you want something better than HF grade at a reasonable step up price that's the sweet spot for Craftsman. It's not intended to capture pros unless they're hard up for money to spend on tools or buying something one time use. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

SBD has been innovating, except they put all their effort into the Craftsman line. Granted it's mostly rebranding like making T-staks in red instead of yellow. Hopefully they will get back to business as usual once the majority of the launch is over. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

What vibration? That's where the Surge idea kind of fails. The vibration of an impact is very little on current designs unless you're running all day then even with the Surge use impact gloves. Second sure it's quieter but quieter than what saw/hammer on the job site? Ear plugs aren't just for impacts. It's an interesting concept and that's why it's a good item to sell but so far we've passed on it in favor of torque per dollar or whatever you want to call it in my crew. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Your assumption of fixed resistance is off because you have to factor in series resistance which if all cells are the same internal resistance, 60 V means 33% more series resistance so the current decreases by that amount, leaving you with roughly similar performance. Then there's the issue of voltage drop proportional to square of current so you can quickly see why something as simple as P=VI is not simple at all. Hence Milwaukee for instance has stayed with 18 V batteries where Dewalt goes up to 56 on a FlexVolt but hasn't so far had a vastly superior advantage, never mind say Kobalt 24 V. Then we can really confuse things when you realize brushless commutation means the rotors are DC with an AC rectifier feeding them and often synchronous so the fields are actually AC. A DC to AC converter as well as DC to DC can easily increase or decrease the voltage in the process so motor voltage is independent of battery voltage and hence the higher voltages play off losses in the wiring (IxIxR) against increased battery series resistance. Hence no easy relationships where voltage is definitive. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Panasonic! That's why when you open up the batteries on almost every tool battery you will find Panasonic lithium ion batteries. Dewalt, Milwaukee, Makita, doesn't matter. They all use the same manufacturer. They can very the model number and thus the size and society of the batteries and there are tons of arguments about various series-parallel arrangements but the actual cells are the same. However there is a temperature sensor and usually some kind of "size" feedback to the controller in the tool battery pack at a bare minimum, plus different contacts and some battery management stuff. This makes it hard to make a knockoff battery. Most knockoffs salvage old used battery packs at least for the electronics. But most also harvest old, used, but not yet failed batteries too and then add more salvaged batteries or out of spec grey market batteries (rejects) or even old lower capacity cells to it. So what you get is a Frankenstein battery. It might work for a while or it might not. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

First, torque wrench accuracy on a calibrated torque wrench is +/-20%. Torque wrenches, particularly the click type, are notoriius for drifting. In an ISO 9000 shop you are supposed to recalibrate every 1000 turns which is about once a week fir the average mechanic. Second, break loose vs. dynamic friction in a bolt is different. Try this. Tighten up a bolt. If you don't have a torque wrench go as far as you can. Wait 15 minutes. See if you can tighten it more. You will. The static friction argument says you can't but you will find out your bolt "loosened". About 80% of the torque used goes into overcoming thread friction and not tightening. So it's the same in both directions. But on top of that the bolt stretch relaxes among other things so you lose a lot of the initial holding even within minutes after tightening. But later on it can tend to seize up requiring more torque. So depending on a lot of not always predictable factors it can take more or less torque to loosen or tighten a bolt. The simplistic physics 101 class is totally wrong when it comes to bolts. There is a web site called boltscience that goes into a lot of this. That is why an inspector cannot simply take a torque wrench nd attempt to tighten already tightened bolts. This test doesn't work and that's exactly what the video is showing. In a word, it's bogus. A good test would be to use a NIST traceable torque sensor just like a calibration company uses. But since it pulses you need a computer to capture the peak to verify the results. Third, these are brushless DC motors. It is not a brushed universal motir and more electronics is involved. The tool regulates voltage which is why as you get close to dead on the battery it still runs like full charge. At around 1-2 bars I've noticed some tools struggle a little but but above that it is the same torque. This is why it does not "bog down" and usually goes right up to the point that the battery is truly dead then just suddenly dies when the controller gives up. It's not like older brushed tools where it gets weaker and then grinds to a halt. Brushless DC is very different from a two wire universal DC motor and not just because it's stronger. Just Google BLDC motors. They are usually actually DC but no brushes or commutators and have to be fed with AC. Instead of a magnet (PMDC) the rotor is fed AC and it uses a rectifier on the rotor to convert to DC. Since fields consume very little power the main power path is to the armature (rotor) which in this case passes through power electronics to turn it into AC with current and voltge regulation and hence torque control and feedback. The tool cn probably destroy the motor if it didn't regulate the output. In the tool the controller has to convert DC into AC to feed the motor, and some are actually just electronically commutated AC synchronous motors which is truly AC altogether. So battery charge may affect it at the tail end but a couple bars of charge is easily enough for full power and that's one of the selling points. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

I see now. https://toolguyd.com/milwaukee-swivel-ratchet-socket-set/ Interesting trick but an adjustable doesn't get more torque. You can get very long "breaker" socket wrenches but a few inches is it with adjustables. The heads are bigger too only advantage is its "flat". Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Not seeing your photo. If you mean square as in sockets intended to drive a SQUARE "bolt" almost all bolts and nuts are hex, except the ends of taps. That is where a true square socket shines. In deep holes on new threads where you need lots of cutting fluid and you have to back it out every few threads, they aren't much use. In tapping holes in sheet metal for mounting electrical equipment or chasing out banged up threads driving a tap with a good drill/driver goes much faster and cleaner than the junk tap holders the tap sets come with. But it's like basin wrenches..,specialized use. If it's just a socket, the word impact is really the key. In our crew we have a good mix never mind the main shop with close to two dozen mechanics but the HF impact sets do just as well as the high end SK stuff. I don't work in a shop. I'm field service. So for me having hand tools that I can live with losing and having to buy new is important. For example if it falls in a chemical tank, off a boat deck, or in raw sewage, I'm probably never going to see it again. So my high end Blackhawk set (from 25 years ago) stays in a bag as my backup set. Our crew uses mostly either Harbor Freight or Kobalt because they're cheap and convenient to replace. If you have an HD everywhere (very few in Virginia and Carolinas) it would be different. The closest HD to my house is 2 hours away (about 100 mioes). I love Milwaukee and that's my core power tool set but not for hand tools. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

For box ends my whole crew has been using Gear Wrench for years. They work and you can get replacements everywhere but the bigger (>1") sizes have to be ordered one at a time. I have a set of their open end ratchets I was given as a Christmas gift and they are total junk. Not even sure it is possible to fix the design. I have the box ends in a tool roll with 3/8" sockets and it all fits in one inside compartment of a 16" tote style bag. I have open ended sockets but rarely ever need to use them. It's like basin wrenches and chain/strap wrenches...Not an every day item but can't get by without it when you need one. The other side has my meters and the pockets carry everytging else. On the outside pockets I have two adjustables for odd sizes and two 14" Crescent brand button style adjustables, on opposite sides for balance. That works for me because I'm rarely doing a lot of piping or conduit work (industrial) other than using what's there but you may have to switch it up. Unlike a lot of electricians a 14" Crescent style pliers is NOT a wrench,. If i did more commercial/resiidential i woukd get 1/2 and 3/4 conduit nut wrenches. The 1/2" socket set, hex keys (hand and socket), and other drills, fittings, conduit and pipe, and plumbers wrenches are kitted in other bags. This is in my main bag that I work out of on every job. 90% of the time I'm using the impact with the adjustable or the open end of the year wrenches. You will lock up the box ends on gear wrenches the first couple times you use the impact and that's just a sign of the damage you're doing. They can't take the shock force. So I just pull the roll and the impact out, oil, the strings, and all my wrenches are laid out neatly beside me. Always put back what you take out and you can stay 100% organized. I hate digging through some guys bag that has all the wrenches in a big tangled pile. Other brands might be better quality but I can buy or swap replacements in almost every store in every town I'm in. If you drop one some place in a wood, chemical, or sewage plant you will instantly appreciate that. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Back in the day...lol. I’m not quite 50 so I don’t consider myself old enough to say those words. They used to make circuit boards with through hole technology and typically single or double sided. One off boards were wire wrapped or used perf boards and/or dead bugs technique, or outright bread boards. Chips were usually socketed. My grandfather had the more time than money issue and grew up in the depression so he would take junk circuit boards and strip them for parts. You could do that back then. Pretty much all chips were one of the couple dozen members of the 7400 then 7400LS family where you had as many as 4 gates on a chip. The 741 op amp was your only analog chip for the most part other than individual transistors. Engineers were still taught this same stuff in college even in the early 90s because that’s what they did at my school, Back then with about $40 in tools I could fix anything electronic. Still can today in some cases. Then chip miniaturization was on steroids. Gate counts exploded to hundreds then thousands then millions of gates. Chips became programmable. First fuse technology then modern FPGAs. The old 0.1” pin spacing gave way to microscopic spacing like “gull wing” chips then pin and ball grid arrays with hundreds of pins. The circuit boards went multilayer and everything went to surface mount. Today you can email your design files and have boards built and shipped in a week if you have the money and they take credit cards. Today you can still repair boards and I’ve worked with people that do it. But the tools are specialized like vacuum tweezers, conductive and insulative epoxies, and they tend to just put dots of solder under the chip and heat it with a heat gun while working under a magnifying glass or microscope. They use machine that automatically tests most of the connections and parts. Similarly little brushless “servo” style motors are repairable. But realistically most “production” parts are no longer component level repairable, and the cost to repair only makes sense when repair is the only option. So not saying it can’t be done but it’s moved from hobbyist to professional skill levels. Changing brushes or whole assemblies is one thing. Popping off a tiny chip capacitor never mind a chip and replacing it is quite another, never mind using microscopic hooks and logic analyzers to troubleshoot. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have the smaller 4.5-5.5” Milwaukee and I use it all the time fabricating. Three things about it. First it eats batteries big time which is sort of what I expected. Not good for big areas like paint stripping but for typical fabricating or even cutting sheet metal it does fine on a 5 Ah battery (or two...). You know when your grinding time on the whole job is under 10 minutes cleaning up welds, putting on bevels, cutting sheet metal, grinding rough edges, removing stuck bolts and nuts. Probably not a good choice for paint stripping or cutting shafts because of long run times. Second you can easily “bury” it but it’s not going to get away from you if you are in a tight spot and have to use it one handed. I can bury corded ones too. My corded Dewalt has way too much torque to use it one handed in a tight spot. I have the “real” one of those, not the baby. Third, the batteries will get very hot if you do run it until the battery runs out. At least on the “mid output” 5.0 Ah ones. The HO 9s and 12s might be different. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you have a smoked drive transistor, it's probably not your only problem. They work by using a very thin piece of silicon that has pathetically little thermal mass so if something shorts elsewhere, the transistor is gone in a flash, literally. With that in mind you might have a bad capacitor or something like that but my money is on the moving part...the motor. Also looking on eBay might take a bit to locate a relatively decent vendor but there are lots of m18 hammer drills on there cheaper than your parts price. I've bought some pretty expensive items off eBay and never had a return problem if they turned up duds but I try to look for vendors instead of individuals. Example: a Greenlee cordless hydraulic CCX 12 ton crimper with most of the dies, a knockout punch adapter, a few cutter dies, and charger and a couple batteries. It's about $5000 for everything. Bought it off a tool repair shop, bought 3 more dies to complete the set, and a charger after we lost it. Machined an adapter to use stainless knockouts instead of just mild steel. Very happy with this setup. All totaled we've got the original $1000 EBay plus about $250 into it and it's far better than $3500 we would have paid for a cheaper and smaller crimper and dies. Another example, bought a 40,000 V probe off EBay for $60 and paid $2 for a ground clamp to fix the one it had compared to thousands for a new one. As you said when you have money, it doesn't matter. If you don't have money, then you get creative. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

We have one customer that has 24 350 HP motors in each of 6 plants in our area. They always want something done that requires loosening all 4 base bolts. Even with a 4 man crew doing it takes all day. Turning 1-3/8 and 1-5/8 wrenches is grueling. While we can't get to every bolt with an impact, it helps a lot. The medium torque guns are really limited to just snugging them up. The torque differential (1400/1000) is because the hammer drive isn't symmetrical. Legitimately I like it this way. You have breaking force when you need it and enough torque to get into the 600-800 lbs. range needed on 1-1/2. If it was 3/4 then I couldn't break loose a stuck 3/4" bolt anymore since 3/4×1/2 reducers will shear off and getting sockets much below 7/8" on a 3/4" platform is rare. The 250 ft-lb range of the mid torque wrenches is not enough. I tried using a mid torque wrench for everything for a while but I sheared too many bolts and using torque sticks was a pain same as remembering to hit the button to dial it down so now I carry a lighter one with the hex socket head and a 3/8" socket set. It's better that way. A 1/2" socket with a 3/8" size doesn't fit a lot of spots where the 3/8-3/8" socket easily goes and the much shorter impact gets into tight spots too. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

You won't get a flapping noise but since it disrupts the air flow which is factory engineered you will get more noise. Even my bolted down truck side boxes on my less than aerodynamic pickup make noise. Worse, Subaru uses little to no insulation. I'll bet there's literally nothing but a thin dacron upholstery limiting behind the headliner. That's how the 1990s vintage ones were. Anything you can do to solidly attach a hard box would help. A better alternative noise wise would be a hitch carrier if you have or can get a receiver hitch. If you have a trailet already look at tongue mounted truck boxes. Or look into paying to rent a u-haul trailer, ups to mail the stuff to yourself, or even buying a small trailer from say Harbor Freight. Although I'm sure u-hauls one-way rates out of California have to be pretty steep right now since they have such a huge "trade imbalance". The mailing thing in particular is usually not as obvious or inexpensive as it seems. I've moved multiple states 5 times plus college was 12 hours drive from my parents and I did that for 8 years. Only suggestion I have is that you keep true valuables like photos, jewelry, and other keepsakes that take up little space with you. It's the bag with nothing you need during the trip in it along with electronics that you unload into the hotel every night and reload back in the vehicle every morning but you never bother to open it because you don't need anything in it. Clothing can be washed along the way and since it's summer you don't need all the bulky winter stuff. Use bags instead of boxes and think in terms of stuffing stuff, not sorting logically for reasons other than packing. I could pack an entire college living experience in one small SUV load back in the 1990s with room to see out the back window and my travelling stuff (music, snacks, overnight bag) in the front seat. Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

Ridgid like Kobalt is a house brand positioned as sort of a consumer grade but agreed they’re fairly well built. I used to use Hitachi in the NiCd and NiMH days. It worked fantastic and the price was half of the big name brands. At the time Hitachi was regarded as an industrial tool brand. But I’ll say this. More than a few customers look at me based on the tools I carry. Milwaukee and Dewalt make a certain statement compared to a house brand or a mid grade brand. Second issue is batteries and the size of the product line. Ridgid has around a half dozen tools on their battery platform. So right now my cordless tools are drill, 3/8” and 1/2” impact wrenches, drill, grinder, reciprocating saw, saber saw, vacuum, tower and cabinet work lights, cable and rebar cutter, cable crimper, and knockout puller. I’m already on 2 battery platforms where the second platform just covers the highly specialized electrical tools. Not counting “battery” tools like a multimeter and not counting tools that make no sense as cordless like a heat gun. While one of my partners uses a mid-grade tool brand as his main tools (Bosch) it puts him in three battery platforms. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk