The Army's Fascinating M1 ABRAMS Impact Wrench

As always, the creator of this channel works in product development for Astro Tools, always consider multiple sources when looking at a tool!

[TorqueTestChannel]

Welcome back to the Tank Test Channel.... :)
Update: Congratz to Kevin of West haven, UT for being randomly selected and getting this Army impact sent to him this week. Appreciate ya'll!

[briancox]

You've got to understand, that kit was made when the USMC had M1 tanks. You put three Marines in a room with a crow bar, and in twenty minutes someone's pregnant, someone's dead, and the crowbar is in five pieces. The tools weren't designed to give wow factor numbers. They were designed to survive the worst any crayon eater could throw at them.

[wildbillc]

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.

[TransAm]

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 .

[Gazereths]

"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.

[matthewlawson]

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.

[melodicgrog]

So all our Bradley’s only had wrenches to do all our maintenance. Saw an abrams crew use one, got the part number from them. Cost a bottle of vodka but I got the supply sergeant to order me one. Best kept secret of my section, we’d swap track in a quarter of the time but would still be “at” the motor pool for hours.

[krom]

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.

[DracoOmnia]

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)

[nismo]

My father was a tanker in Berlin in the late 80's. Company F, 40th armor. I actually got to drive an M1 Abrams tank at the age of 17. It was pretty damn intimidating!! I maybe went 100 feet at 2 mph but it was something else being in control of a massive killing machine. Shout out to anyone from Berlin that knew SFC Price in the 40th Armored Division. He passed in 2011 from cancer due to exposure to agent orange in vietnam.

[drews]

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 :)

[gabrielwright]

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

[killrmuskrat]

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

[bobbertbobberson]

A couple notes.
1. It doesn't actually need that giant plug just for function, it's for commonality with the 'slave receptacles' that allow vehicles to jump or charge each other
2. In the clip of them working on the tank (hey, my old unit!), they're not tightening down a spring compressor, it's called a "track jack". It is a screw with a hook that goes in and out with the screw. The other hook is affixed to the body of the track jack. It is used to squeeze the track together so that you can put on the connecting linkages (center guides and end connectors) when re-connecting the track

[oasntet]

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...

[TorqueTestChannel]

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.

[kimber]

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.

[Terminal-Fabrication]

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

[vinny]

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

[ranger]

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.