Our friend Rick wrote to us about a problem he was having with his PS40-2. It seems he found out what happens when you use a straight bit in a quick change chuck.
I’ve got a little bit of a dilemma. So I had let my brother-in-law borrow my Bosch PS40-2 (The Impactor) When I gave it to him I only gave him the bit so he could use it with a 3/8″ socket set for his brakes.
Anyway - today I was over at my in-laws and he still had it and I needed to screw some sheetrock screws into some plywood and figured I’d use my handy dandy PS40-2. Problem was I didn’t have any quick change Phillips bits. So I used a regular bit (half inch tall one, or 3/4″ or whatever the normal ones are). I screwed in a few screws and everything worked great - I even pulled it out once or twice. Well at some point between the 4th and 8th screw, it seemed to sink into the quick change chuck a little more than it had been - and when I was done I could no longer get the bit out. I’ve tried everything - but there’s barely anywhere to get some purchase to grab it. I’ve gotten a good hold on it with a needle nose pliers and still no dice. The Quick Change chuck only comes up a little - but it doesn’t pull up all the way to completely disengage.
So that’s my story. Do you have any ideas? Is there anyone at Bosch who might have any idea, short of taking the damned thing apart? I checked online, thinking “I can’t be the first d-bag to do this” But I haven’t found anything…any ideas?
Since we’d never done it either, we thought perhaps a set of vice-grips, but that’s about as far as we got. So we called in the crew at Bosch to see if they had any experience solving issues like this. Here’s their response.
Most likely what has happened is that the bit edge has slipped below the detent ball on the inside of the shaft. Depending on whose bit he used they could be cut a little higher or lower but we did some rough side by side measurement and it looks like it is right on the edge of some of our bits. With a little impact it sunk into the shaft a little further as he stated below and that is likely what pushed it behind the detent.
Don’t think there is a solution to help him get it out because even if you can get a good grip with pliers like he said, the bit likely does not have a nice rounded/smooth edge to ride over like the groove in the quick change bit.
Not surprisingly, the most common reaction from the guys at Bosch was “Use the right sized bit to begin with.” However, to be fair, I will say this could’ve happened to me on another day had I been in the same situation. So I suppose the best answer is get it out of there any way you can, destructive or not, and take your chances — or relegate it going forward to the Bosch #2 Phillips drill.
We put it to you the readers: have any of you dealt with this type of thing before and gotten out alive with the drill intact? Let us know in comments.
Note* The drill in the picture is not the PS40-2 but a PS20 with the correct Bosch bit in it. We really didn’t want to replicate this one for the sake of a picture.
PS40-2 Impact Driver [Bosch]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
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