I wonder how much peer pressure plays a role in the popularity of Snap On with mechanics.
Would a thrifty mechanic be laughed out of the shop if he showed up to work with Craftsman tools?
Probably not. But after a while he’d end up ostracised for borrowing the other guys’ Snap-On stuff all the time.
Or so Pops claimed.
Snap-On was one such company but there was also Mac Tools (regarded by some as being of even better quality).
Klein is a world of difference. With cutting tools you can easily identify the better tool. When I was making chain maille and had to cut an endless amount of stainless steel wire the Kliens were the only set of cutting dikes that I could use to do so without standing on the handles(and bending) of cheaper brands.
It’s total brand-worship. Makes me disgusted. Me with my Calvins, Bare Escentuals, Vans, Hanes and Levis. My husband actually WAS laughed at when he brought in his big new rolling box from Costco. Those big Snap-On boxes are like $3k+ and we got his for under a thousand.
Ridiculous, says I. I get pissed every time he comes home saying he has to have another freakin $100+ tool. Even though we can use the deductions at tax time, I find it hard to believe that he absolutely has to have a tool EVERY TIME the driver comes. Bullshit.
I just now asked him and he gave some pathetic excuse that Sears only honors the lifetime warranty on a handful of tools, but Snap-On honors it for EVERYTHING. Hmmm, I think I’m gonna ask him to buy a rechargeable battery and see if it works.
FONT=Comic Sans MS]i hate snap-on![/FONT]
Valgard says he will take the tools off your hands, Dr. Qadgop. Well, I’m not one for charity so tell you what, I’ll drive up and fix your shelf in exchange for the tool chest!
How’s this Saturday look?
I remember during the 50’s and 60’s going with my Dad to get the car serviced or inspected and spending what seemed like hours studying the mechanics dusty poster collection. Ridgid had a pretty good set (insert lecherous smiley face here!) but Snap-On was the best without a doubt.
The Garage where I worked back in the day was 1/3 Craftsman and 2/3 Snap-on. The Craftsman guy drove an family car and worked hard to take care of his kids, the Snap-on guys were A) Mr. Fancy hair gel driving the new sports truck and his son hated him guy and B) Mr. Skim the till to support his cocaine habit man. Kind of influenced how I felt about Snap-on (that and the comment “Only thing worse than a snap on tool is a padded bra”).
Snap-On certainly knows their ergonomics, I bought the most popular sizes from them (1/2, 9/16, 5/8, primarily) and the rest of my stuff from Craftsman. Craftsman, the company who replaced a deep well socket I shoved on an impact wrench because I was in a hurry. Direct violation of their warranty, but they don’t ask.
I don’t even know where a Sears is, so I now have tools from Home Depot 
Colfax and Kipling-ish. 
Not sure about Sna-On, but please be aware that those Chinese-made $4.99 socket sets are crap-I nearlt broke my neck using one-the socket snapped in two! Craftsman tools are great-mine NEVER break!
I made my living with Snap-On , MAC and Matco tools for a lot of years.
Snap-On used to advertise There is a difference. IMHO this is 100% correct. Two stories:
On Volvos I used to have to take off the 4 10 mm nuts that held the fan clutch on. These nuts would over tighten themselves from the rotation of the fan. You could not use a socket or a box end wrench, only an open end. About once a week you would wind up rounding off the corners on at least one of the nuts, and had to use a chisel to remove said nut. This wasted time, and cost me money (flat rate technician I got paid the same if the job took me 45 minutes or 1 hour).
Anyway SO came out with a wrench called Flank Drive Plus which puts the stress from the wrench on the flanks of the nut and not on the corners. Twenty eight freakin dollars for a 10mm wrench! :eek:
I have not rounded on a nut since I started using that wrench. Not one. Works for me. That $28 dollar wrench probably saved me from wasting $500 removing rounded off bolts.
I worked with a guy that had the worst luck ever. One Tuesday he lost his 10mm 12 point socket. He was bummed. On Wed. a car came in and he found a brand new shinny Craftsman 10 mm 12 point socket. He was like a kid in a candy store. You would have thought it was Christmas.
On Thursday he had to torque/angle torque some rod bearing bolts on an engine in the car. The bolts have a 10 mm 12 point head. So he grabs his Craftsman socket. He torques the bolts and then goes to angle tighten them the additional 90 degrees. On the second bolt the socket breaks and his hand travels at approx Mach 3.2 across the bottom on the engine, and hits the stainless steel heat shield for the exhaust. It became stained with his blood. Lots of it. 9 stitches worth of blood. Lost 3 days work. I finished the job while he was at the emergency room with my SO socket.
So beyond ergonomics there is a functional difference in quality. You will also notice that professional wrenches tend to have smaller heads to allow them to get into spots that consumer wrenches won’t. They can do this because of the better grade of material used.
quest I have known lots of mechanics that either used Craftsman only, or had Craftsman and then replaced them with higher quality stuff. we never laughed at these guys, as long as they fixed cars. We laughed at the guys that couldn’t fix cars.
I always presumed those ubiquitous air-conditioned Snap0n Tools trucks around town were actually disguised police surveillence vehicles. :eek:
Discussed this with my friend who was on Monster Garage. He had a Snap-On wrench break while working on that show, FWIW.
He did say that the S-O tools were nice and he feels that they are “better” than his Husky set, but he doesn’t feel that they are worth all the extra money.
OK guys, nobody but me and the younger Mercotette is getting their hands on all that Snap-On stuff. shakes fist As soon as I move into a bigger place…
I like to talk to auto mechanics about Snap-On. If I see they’ve got Snap-On posters or stickers or toolboxes, I’ll tell them about how my grandpa sold Snap-On… and use the opportunity to bounce strategically.
I met a scruffy looking guy in a bar once; he said his name was “Mike McCbbn.” I asked him where he worked, and he said he was unemployed, but he was a self-employed mechanic.
I squinted. “How can you be self-employed and unemployed?”
“Ah cain’t fix nothin’.” :smack:
I’ve formed an opinion using years of ‘more than your average home mechanic’ experience.
Snap-on, Matco, etc are all GOOD tools. They’re just not BETTER tools for 98% of what a hobbiest does. I only have one exception: everything on the Corvette was torx. I went through three t-55 sockets before hunting down the Matco tool guy. That socket is still perfect.
Now, as a hobbiest, if a tool breaks, I’ve gotta leave the garage whether it’s Craftsman, Matco, or NAPA. In the case of Matco, I’ve got an 12 mile drive to the guy’s house. I’m not on a route, and I can’t get tools during the work day. I generally buy NAPA parts because they’ve got a similar warrantee, and they’re just down the street.
You can pay $8, $30, or $300 for a socket set. The $8 set isn’t worth the cardboard box it came in. The $30 set will be pretty good, and the $300 set will be worth $75. You can’t buy a $75 set, so what do you do?
I’ve also found that, even though I don’t earn a living working on cars with my tools, I don’t bark my knuckles anymore. There’s something about using the right tools for the job and not getting in a hurry that keeps my skin intact.
There’s been a time or two I had to limp along when Snap-on had a tool to do xactly what I needed ( http://tinyurl.com/mveh3 ) but it’s been exceedingly rare.