Corwell tools, still made in this country,no bs on you warranty,every bit as good as Snap-Off ( I call them this due to my box full of busted wrenches breaker bars ratchets ect) that the guy in my area wont even come see, because i told him point blank I would not be buying any more. PS stop sniffing your screwdriver handles.
Wrong question, "what do I expect you to do about it". The answer, a straight right hand to the nose, with the statement "clean up that blood you stupid bastard" while you're getting my new tool.
Correct me if I am am wrong but Snap On doesn't pay for that truck or that dealers inventory. That's all on him. He needs to bank roll the truck and inventory and go out there and sell his ass off to hopefully break even. If they go to a brick & mortar store then the price of the tools will go up.
Tool boxes and screwdriver handles are often made of cellulose butyrate plastic, and a common complaint is the awful vomit-smell these items emanate. GOOGLE tool-box and vomit, and you'll see what I mean... Sears screwdrivers and Excell tools are a good example of this.
I've also got some old ones with handle problems. Kinda seems like they went bad very quickly after 25 or so years of use.
Mine from the 70's did the same thing, ooze then started to literally break apart. Snap on replaced the all.
i asked my nap-on rep about warranty replacement and sales.its all bogus,the reps are trying to extort money from you.our area didnt have a rep for at least five years and all the local techs had piles of warranty just waiting. he covered all of them.no questions. there is a difference in quality tools. just ask my knuckles....
Had a couple of the black handled drivers go at right about the same time recently after about 30+ years. Both just crumbled. No problem. They're Snap-On, right? Flagged down a local rep and he's been trying to ditch me ever since. I bought Snap-On because they were great tools and they touted a lifetime warranty (which are the reasons I bought 'em)... Well, I'm still waiting. I guess if you don't spend thousands in the recent last few years, they don't wanna know ya'... I'll try the suggestion of sending them direct to Snap-On if I can't get satisfaction; but you can bet I'll never buy another Snap-On tool, though.
the guy tom that goes to my buddies shop does not own his truck nor the inventory. he is a salary payed employee with bounuses every year around may. i know this for a fact because he goes drinking with us sometimes and he talks about it and how it works. this guy is out of a suburb office outside of chicago so, NO not all the drivers are bank rolling their own truck and inventory.
G'day, I have a set of black handled clutch drivers from the 70's and all the handles started oozing the oily black stuff. I noticed this fall that a couple of the handles had turned white and when I twisted them the handles crumbled. I have never used brake clean or carb clean on them either. The problem now is that the clutch drive handles are discontinued and we can't get replacements. My black handled regular flat blade and phillips drivers were purchased in the 80's, sit in the same drawer, and are fine. Just a bad batch I guess. I do however, have nothing but good to say about my Snap-On dealer. When I quit wrenching he picked up my tool box from the dealership I had been working at. He took it to his home, reloaded it in his pickup and hauled it well over 100 miles to my Dad's shop. Pretty darn good service. ms
they are already in some stores. i dont think 2 guys i known for 12 and 14 years are gonna come up with the same lie. they dont know eachother. just saying.
I've worked directly across the street from them for 21 years now. I still have yet to buy any tools from them. Having overpriced tools doesn't make me anymore money at the end of the day. To each his own but I don't need to say I have Snap-On tools.
Not sure what the chemical composition of the handles is but different types of plastics will degrade if exposed to the wrong chemicals. An early type of plastic was casein which was used in steering wheels in the 1940's and 50's.This was milk based and when it got hot it shrunk and cracked and gave off an odor that smelled like(drum roll) sour milk! Another early type of plastic(invented in the 1870's and still used today in certain applications)is celluloid which is nitrocellulose,alcohol,and camphor.It's charm was it could be molded crystal clear or a gazillion different colors.It's problem:when it started to degrade it gave off nitric acid fumes that caused steel to rust and brass to corrode and it eventually would crystallize and crumble in your hands.56 Pontiac radio knobs are notorious for doing this. The only plastic I know of that doesn't degrade is polypropylene(the stuff they make battery cases out of).It also doesn't out-gas or need a mold release when it is made and is extremely solvent resistant.Unfortunately it is like teflon in that it can't be painted. The screwdriver handles sound like they had an improper mix of material and catalyst or improper mix of ingredients.Usually when that happens you either get a product that hardens too quickly and breaks up or only hardens in parts which could cause the oozing.Usually though there has to an activator to cause the reaction.
I had some snap on stuff go bad, the snap on rep told me that he wouldn't replace them because I didn't do enough business with him. A call to company headquarters and about 2 weeks later, he came up to me in the shop and apologized, took the bad tools and brought me new ones. those were the last tools I ever bought from the crumb. Went with Mac tools after that.
Mine from the '70's - early '80's do the same thing. It even lifted the paint in my tool box. My local rep wouldn't do anything, so I replaced them with Hazet tools from Germany, and they're fine. I keep Craftsman ones in my car tool kit.
I haven't purchased any new Snap On tools since the late 60's, but I still have them and no problems at all.
I've been buying Snap on tools for over 35 years,I had a few dealers try not to warranty tools,one was for the chrome peeling off a line wrench and he gave me a hard time telling me chrome isn't warrantied,and had one tell me the wheels on the tool box was not under warranty be cause there not made to be wheeled around! And the best one was when the lock on my box fell apart he said it's not covered because some one tried to pick it see the mark's! But in each circumstance a call to Snap on took care of it all,and with the handles melting that never happned to me just that the handles crumbled they warrantied them also,I just bought the new scanner from them my old one went out I had that one for almost 18 years,this new one is great $4600.00 alittle more than I wanted to spend but worth it,their tech support is great to work with taught me a lot so far....
I apprenticed in 1957-'61, at 'the best damn garage in town', (ask anybody!) Mayfield's Garage...(Santa Clara, CA) My boss encouraged me to have the best tools, that was Snap On at the time...he kicked in 25% when I made purchases. (good insurance I would stay focused, and stay there) Warranty was second to none, same dealer for 16 years... When I retired, we moved to this little town in Central Ca., and the Snap On dealers changed on a regular basis! One lasted 6 months, then two of them were around for 2 or 3 months... One day in 1995 a new dealer came byour shop with a small Snap On panel truck. He was a mechanic I knew, and was now a salaried factory dealer in a factory owned truck. (not an independent dealer) He explained that Snap On had to re-examine their options and route locally, and he would be our dealer for a time... His route encompassed 50 miles North and South, and he was working 6 days! Good guy, warranty was straight up, I bought some electronics from him, and some more hand tools... But I had never heard of a salaried factory man on a factory truck before.
hey at least snap on hasn't gone the way of mac tools has snap on dealers don't like to deal with people they don't see on a weekly basis just because there is a chance that they could end up getting screwed warrenty is warrenty and if the dealer won't help you the company will just might take a bit longer
There are threads about this over on garage journal, its not a across the range issue or even snap-on issue. From what I have read over on garage journal it seems to only effect ones made between certain years and was just the type of plastic that was used at the time. As has been said some plastics react to some things.
I've had the same problem with MAC tools. The rep that stops buy doesn't want to warranty them because I never bought from him originally. I bought my tools in a different area at the time. The Snap On rep is the same way. So much for the lifetime warranty program. The last MAC rep I had, actually took my tools for warranty and I never saw him again, called MAC Tools and they said I didn't have a case since I didn't have any proof. What a bunch of great American companies.
Who can afford Snap On tools and and old car hobby at the same time?? I am 60 years old and the only Snap On I have been able to acquire is a screw driver found on the side of the road....Still is my best screwdriver!!!!
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