Gator Grip Universal Socket
GATOR GRIP UNIVERSAL SOCKET
CW EVALUATION
Get a grip-on almost anything
HERE’S A GADGET THAT WOULD HAVE Tim Allen and his “Tool Time” comrades hooting and snorting with glee: a one-size-fits-all socket that works on American nuts and bolts, metric nuts and bolts, even damaged and oddly shaped nuts and bolts.
Sound overly ambitious? Well, with its Gator Grip Universal Socket, the Endeavor Tool Co. (320 Soundview
Rd., Guilford, CT 06437) claims to have such a device. The Gator Grip is a 3/8-drive socket that’s the same diameter and length as a typical 3/4-inch deep socket, but its interior is filled with 54 hardened, spring-loaded pins.
When the Gator Grip is not in use, the ends of the pins sit flush with the socket’s hex opening; but when it is pushed over the head of a bolt or nut, the pins that make contact with the fastener are forced up inside the socket while the rest remain extended, surrounding the fastener snugly enough that it then can be tightened or loosened.
Clever. And in actual practice, it works rather well. The Gator Grip not only fits on bolt/nut hexes anywhere between XUand 3/4-inch (7mm and 19mm), but on virtually any shape that will go up inside the socket. We successfully loosened or tightened a wide variety of bolt sizes and shapes within the intended range, as well as
wing nuts, square nuts and even some fairly boogered-up nuts.
But not all nuts. Because it has the same O.D. as a 3/4-inch socket, the Gator Grip is too fat to fit onto a small fastener that sits down inside a close-fitting recess. What’s more, the pins retract only about 3/s of an inch, so the socket won’t slide down over a protruding stud far enough to grab its nut. And while Endeavor says the Gator Grip can handle up to 100 footpounds of torque, our test socket occasionally slipped off a fastener when we applied a lot of force.
Still, any one tool with the potential to fit so many different fasteners can be a useful addition to one’s on-theroad toolkit, either as a supplement or a replacement for the kit’s existing tools. The Gator Grip sells for $20 from participating True Value hardware stores, or via mail order by calling 800/463-4000. □
