Northern tool has a nice set of ball end allen wrenches,sizes 3,4,5,6 are 1/4" drive and 7,8,9,and 10 are 3/8 drive they are short so can be used with a u-joint or wobble extension in tight places.I find them very handy and if i remember right they were only around $12.oo Don

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Red Green "This is only temporary,Unless it works!"

97 E300D 157000 miles
87 300TD ?141k? miles

Ball-end Allen tools are quite useful in the right circumstances for sure. On the other hand I would almost never use them for either attempting to break a fastener free or applying final torque if I could avoid it.

The very design of the ball head essentially creates a minimum tool face which then interfaces with the fastener's contact surfaces. If you look at these tools usually you end up with a thin strip of the tool contacting the fastener and even less if it's canted at any angle. In my experience that is a recipe for stripped fastener disaster! These Allen head cap screws are in my opinion prone to stripping out and I take every precaution to make sure they don't.

In this particular case there are a dozen chances for either success or failure and one stripped fastener can stop all progress either causing a whole new project direction or a reversal of the process until a later time when you can deal with that obstacle! A skillful mechanically inclined operator can overcome most problems of this nature with a hammer and cold chisel but it’s seldom quick or pretty!

These less expensive sets are all right for general working on stuff, but it's my experience that as less exact dimensioned lower quality tool can easily cost you more time and effort and increase frustration for some tasks. As an example I would give the 8 mm Allen head cap screw which attaches the motor mount to the chassis the utmost respect, I have a very nice Stahlwille tool that I use just for that purpose. Because the consequences of a failure to remove that fastener and the effort to remove it after stripping it out makes the $20 for that single tool seem cheap by comparison. Allen key tools are particularly susceptible to wear on their working ends that get tapered and smaller dimensioned than when they are factory fresh, the nice thing is that you can usually restore the tool to good working condition by simply cutting the first 1/4-1/2" off and back to get to the unworn meat of the tool.

For someone trying to accomplish something over the weekend on a daily driver that needs to be back on the road come Monday morning, it can be a royal pain in the a$$ when something that could be simple goes awry.

i got manifold off without a problem,used long 6mm ball hex socket,gasket was toast,had been leaking at #1 ,have to get reamer and ordered gasket,im going to take my time putting it together,deep 12mm socket is needed .anybody know if i need to torque bolts in a specific pattern,what torque?

thanks for the help.

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95 e320,87 sdl,79 300sd