The Army's Fascinating M1 ABRAMS Impact Wrench

Welcome back to the Tank Test Channel.... :) A random order number will be chosen from Etsy around 3rd-4th week of July to be sent this kit. We'll email you and post your first name and last initial here as record when you respond. Cheers guys!

"Pissed off gorilla in a hurry" rings so true of the few soldiers I've known. Give one of these guys a DCF961 and that Abrams track will never come off again.

For those wondering the cost, in 2005 was $2513.00 (from an old list I have). The stock number for this impact was created back in 1989, so no changes to the design since then, or it would have a new number .

We never used those impacts plugged into a HMMWV, they were plugged into the "Slave" outlet on the M1A1 Abrams Tank, which puts out more amps and around 28 volts. The only time we really needed to use that impact was for track maintenance, replacing track pads, replacing track sections, breaking track, and putting it back together, etc. Everything else was really just done with hand tools.

Army tanker here. We always ran these off a running vehicles if we could. It isn't just that it will actually do work but these will drain the vehicle batteries quickly if you are using it for more than just one road wheel.

"For use of all skill levels" Was a nice way of including the Marine Corps

People usually think "best thing ever" when they hear "military grade" but the reality is that, in nearly all cases, it's several generations behind modern adaptations, built to an absurd spec including functioning in both the coldest and hottest places on the planet, doesnt care about atmospheric pressure, or water, and needs to be excessively reliable. To accomplish all of that manufacturers usually have to rely on tried and tested techs, none of that bleeding edge stuff (too unreliable). 10 years ago, I shit you not, there were computer systems in active service that STILL run on floppy disks... (that's the "save icon" for you really young folk)

This just in, Flex announces their new NATO adapters and Army contracts!

In a world where the government spends $12,000 on a hammer I'd like to see what they pay for this spinny boi.

Two things that might be relevant here are that Abrams has something in the order of many thousands of CCA of battery :) NATO also specifies that anything that goes into one of those plugs must be able to operate on anything from 18-32V. The other things that you'll see as differerent for this versus standard impacts is that this thing is probably designed for multiple minutes of continuous usage, which would probably melt down or cause a circuit protection for a standard system :)

To clarify we didn't limit current to it on the dyno runs, footage is of us simply dialing it up little by little early on making sure we wouldn't be frying it. It was taking just over 125% of the tool's rated amps during runs.

As silly-looking as those NATO connectors are, they work extremely well in the field. Very positive connections that are likely to work after being dropped repeatedly in the mud, just so long as you shake out enough of the mud that you can actually plug the two together. And after many uses, the wallering-out of the socket doesn't cause intermittent connections until is it obviously bad, like falling off completely...

I worked on government military equipment, and they set crazy specs like it has to work in crazy cold and heat up in airplane with no air pressure waterproof it is just crazy some of the specs. then the contracts are for thousands so by the time the last lots are made it is obsolete and they have a new improved model.

Designed to be able to yell at the closest person "grab this impact wrench and tighten these bolts as we put them in", and be confident that anyone would do the same job the same way and not strip the bolts.

oh nice, they upgraded since i was in. We had giant hydraulic impacts. What a pain with 2 hydraulic lines. That slave cable adapter for power is sweet, it's the military jumper cable port

I'm really surprised it uses a regular drive size for the sockets. Many military tools use odd drive sizes to discourage people from walking off with them

Let's get this out onto the torque bench. Nice!

I used to be in the USAF working on ACFT those are torq limiters they are set a predefined Torq and slip when reached it makes it easier and dummy proof for 200 lb gorillas slap one on a speed handle or a ratchet and tighten till click boom next fastener helps a lot when you have a hundred fasteners on one panel that req 225inlbs

the accuracy of your assumptions is spot on. I loved keeping one of these on a regular truck since I could just hook it straight to the NATO slave receptacle and have an extremely durable 500ish ftlb torque wrench to quickly change flats over manual tools.

I'm super jealous of your, project farms, and 2018ish AVE's work. Taking apart and testing tools seems like a ton of fun.