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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/Jam-Boi-yt on 2025-02-03 02:14:08+00:00.

So today I was trying to do some repairs on my car. And I very recently bought an impact wrench to help make it easier to fix my car. It’s an electric one and has a little button on it that slides from one side of the wrench to the other and tells the wrench which way to turn the bolt. Now something else I want to mention about impact wrenches. They have a lot of torque to get bolts in and out of whatever they need to. And I do mean A LOT of torque. Like hundreds of pounds of torque.

The first thing I had to do is get my lug nuts off. Which I did no problem. Tire came off. None of my lug nuts had any problems, and I simply put them to the side. The next step was removing the brake caliper. Which you need to take out the bolts for, which face away from you. I flipped my impact wrench around and pressed the button, only for it to do nothing. I checked, saw that the button had accidentally been pressed in a little and pushed it back. Except I didn’t push it the right way.

So when I pressed the button, I was surprised when the bolt seemed a bit short. Then I noticed there were no threads. Then I noticed the rest of the bolt still in the caliper. Which is not good. So not good that I now need to buy a new brake caliper.

“TL;DR:” I accidentally hit a button on my impact wrench that made it go from loosening my caliper bolt, to tensioning it. And broke the bolt.