1/2" Extention Bar (250mm)

The problem it solves comes up constantly. The fastener is at the bottom of a recess and the ratchet head will not fit down to it. The fastener is behind a pulley, a bracket or a wiring loom, and there is no room to swing a handle beside it. The fastener is reachable but your knuckles are not — the ratchet would swing straight into a manifold or a chassis rail. In all of those the socket can get on perfectly well; it is the ratchet that cannot. An extension bar puts the handle out where there is room to work while the socket stays where it needs to be.

There is one thing to understand about using them, and it is the source of most extension bar frustration. The longer the extension, the harder it is to keep the socket square to the fastener, because a small angle at your hand becomes a large one at the far end. A socket held at an angle bears on the tips of the hex rather than the flats, and that is exactly how nuts get rounded. So use the shortest extension that reaches, keep the bar as close to in line with the fastener as you can, and on anything tight steady the socket end with your free hand.

The bar is drop forged from fine chrome vanadium with a matt chrome finish. Chrome vanadium gives the hardness and wear resistance to keep the drive squares crisp, along with the toughness to twist without snapping — and an extension bar is the component most likely to be twisted, since it is a long slender column of steel carrying the full torque between ratchet and socket.

The buyers are vehicle and motorcycle mechanics, machinery and plant fitters, engineering and maintenance workshops, and hardware dealers supplying garages.

Never use a chrome hand extension on an impact wrench — plated hardened chrome vanadium is brittle under impact hammering and a long slender bar is exactly the component that snaps. Impact work needs impact-rated extensions. Message us on WhatsApp for a price, or for a set of lengths, which is how most people end up buying them.