I’m very careful even with the impacts and don’t just indiscriminately hammer away. Short bursts. Visual observation. Some common sense… I feel like the hammering is safer.
I just use cheap air tools. Use a breaker to crack the nuts then spin off and on with air tools. The cheap stuff uses more air though. I have a distribution system in the garage with quick connects so not much hassle with hoses.
Compressor pretty much stationary.
Honda must use body builders putting their stuff together. I learned on the Acura to always make sure to loosen the trans fill bolt before draining the fluid. Actually started to twist my 1/2 “ extension before finally breaking loose. Pipe on the breaker bar. Sweat, sweat. I hire it now.
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I have considered buying a Honda in the past, and one of the things I always do before buying a vehicle is looks at the instructions for various maintenance and repair procedures in order to ascertain if the vehicle will be DIY friendly or not.
Although changing the timing belt on a 4-cylinder non-VVT Honda engine did not appear difficult, what gave me pause was the difficulty of replacing the head gasket on these engines, should that ever be required. With an open-deck aluminum block, these engines are very unforgiving of being overheated even once, or of not following the head bolt removal/tightening procedures 100%. Other engines, such as the Chrysler 2.4L 4-cylinder, are a lot more forgiving and give a much higher probability of success to the DIYer.
Honda vehicles do have some DIYer-friendly features, such as an access panel to replace the fuel pump without having to lower the tank.
Nicely enough the Ford Escorts had an access under the back seat. It was nice to have when I had to pull a pump from a parts car and put it in the running car. (And iron blocks, though the heads were obviously aluminum). Now my Ranger is a different story as you have to pull the bed off or drop the tank.
On that last point, the Ranger is a '97 and started it’s life in Minnesota, I think (judging by the old license plate I found behind one of the jump seats). Plenty of rust and when I pulled the bed, I was wishing my impact had a lot more a** than it did. IT was like pulling teeth - only harder, I think. (DK - I’ve had a tooth pulled, but never actually pulled one).
The older Honda’s are one of the most DIY and easy cars to work on basically, and last forever, one reason most tuner young people modify the crap out of them, and they have extremely strong cylinder blocks, that is why you can add a lot of turbo boost to them and make tons of power… Now the automatics in them are just plain strange in their design… lol
Have both air (C-H cheapie) and cordless (Milwaukee M18) impacts. The Milwaukee earned my respect, but it’s heavy and I don’t think particularly well balanced, so it gets used on one shot jobs like taking off a tire. If I’m doing a big take apart, say replacing a wheel bearing, it’s worth it to me to run an air hose and use the C-H.
As for air supply, the only things that matter are pressure and volume respectively for force and run time. What size is the hose connection on the tool? If it’s a 3/8 inlet, then the hose and fittings should be 3/8 to avoid restriction. But how many of these tools that recommend 3/8 hoses then have a 1/4 NPT port? My compressor doesn’t put out the CFM recommended by most of my air tools, but that only means I can’t run them constantly. As a DIYer I can live with a 30% duty time and spend my money on tools instead of a compressor with excessive capacity.
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My diy’er need for an impact tool is only for the first or second bang. Once the fastener is loose, I’m happy enough to switch to regular hand tools, even though it take more time. The economics for a pro mechanic are much different than a diy’er, they need their tools fully up and operational at the maximum-rated level; if a tool saves 15 minutes over the course of a day, that’s 1/4 labor hours more income, and it doesn’t take many days like that to justify the tool’s cost.
Funny story, sort of related. A coworker friend of mine was a staff worker, but found a job as vp of engineering at a small tech company. He was telling me how much money he was saving the company by scrimping on his allotted budget. He didn’t seem very happy when I explained that his job actually was to spend the money as fast as possible. The company objective isn’t to save money in a bank account, but to be used to speed up the work output. As you might expect. He soon discovered he wasn’t suited to this sort of job.
I switch everything over to Milton Hi Flo fittings. Tools and hoses. You need to commit to them they are not compatible with other low flo fittings.
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