1/2" Hexagon Socket (17mm)

Name: 1/2" Hexagon Socket (17mm)
Brand: Harden
SKU: 535517

Item No. 535517

Price on request

Seventeen millimetres is the standard head size for M12 fasteners and one of the four or five sockets that do most of the work in any vehicle workshop. M12 is where fasteners become genuinely structural, so 17mm turns up on suspension arms and bushes, engine and gearbox mountings, subframe and chassis bolts, driveshaft and hub fixings, steering components and heavy bracketry.

Because those are load-carrying fasteners, this is a size where two things matter more than they do lower down the range. The first is that they are usually tight — often very tight, and frequently corroded, because they live underneath the vehicle. The second is that they must go back to a specified torque, since a suspension or mounting bolt that is under-tightened works loose and one that is over-tightened is stretched and weakened.

That combination makes the six-point versus twelve-point question worth raising here. A six-point socket bears on the flat faces of the nut; a twelve-point bears much closer to the corners. On a tight, rusted 17mm suspension bolt, a twelve-point is noticeably more likely to round it off. Twelve-point sockets exist because they can be engaged at twice as many angles, which is genuinely useful in confined spaces — but on anything seized, six points is the safer tool.

The socket is drop forged from fine chrome vanadium with a matt chrome finish. Forging flows the steel's grain around the hexagonal form rather than cutting through it, keeping unbroken metal running through the six corners where all the stress concentrates. Chrome vanadium supplies hardness, wear resistance and toughness together.

The buyers are vehicle, commercial vehicle and bus mechanics, suspension and steering specialists, agricultural and plant fitters, engineering and maintenance workshops, and hardware dealers supplying the motor trade.

Three practical points. Seat the socket completely before pulling, since a partly seated socket bears only on the tips of the hex. On a seized fastener use penetrating oil and time rather than a longer bar, because shearing a suspension bolt off in its housing is a far worse afternoon than waiting twenty minutes. And never put a chrome hand socket on an impact wrench — plated hardened chrome vanadium cracks under impact hammering and throws fragments. Impact work needs black chrome molybdenum sockets. Message us on WhatsApp for a price, singly or across the common sizes.