Tools can make a job easy or miserable and the tool that has caused the most frustration for me is the snap ring pliers. On the Freeline brakes, there are two difficult to remove snap rings / circlips. The worst being on the master cylinder. I started with the cheapy Harbor Freight ones, they failed almost immediately. I then moved onto the deluxe HF one, they worked okay but eventually, you couldn’t squeeze the ring, under pressure it wouldn’t move enough range to remove the rings. So I moved on to a pair of Channellock snap ring pliers and it worked well…for a while. Now its doing the same thing, under pressure the tips only move about half the distance when fully squeezed. These have a mechanism that allow it to switch between squeeze force and spread force. I suspect something fails in the switch. Either way, I am looking for recommendations. Show me your best snap ring tool!
FACOM reversible.
20 char
I have a set of Klein. For snap ring pliers I’ve founds it always best to buy one for each style. A spreader and a squeezer. The universal ones always suck.
One thing that helps, even with the worst of tools, is to make sure you install the snap ring with the correct side up… Many don’t realize that snap rings are directional. The holes for the pliers are slightly tapered, so you want the smaller ID of the taper to be the side you grab it from with the pliers. This allows the tool to grab an edge and kind of get under the snap ring to secure it on the pliers. This greatly decreses your chance of flinging one into a low earth orbit too.
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