Modifying 90° Pliers into Snap Ring Pliers
 

I bought a 90* needle nose plier @ Harbor Freight. Needed to notch and modify the end of the plier a little to get it to fit in the circlip on the turbo.

Can a Dremel cut off wheel be able to do this? Not sure if it will even make a scratch on the plier.

Maybe someone can chime in on this. Thanks.

hhhmmmmmmm

all I had to do was make the tips pointier and it worked for my need nose pliers. A cut off wheel (or 2 or 3) should get the job done I'd think.

I had to do the same thing, and as a matter of fact I used HF pliers as well. IIRC, I used a dremel-type tool, no problem. Worked like a champ.

does anyone have pics? i need to get htat snap ring off soon and there is no way in hell normal snapring pliers can do it.

lol i broke my snapring pliers trying to do it

yeah i tried doing it with a 30 yr old pair of snapring pliers... i stopped real quick

Just curious to what snap ring your trying to remove and why? Regular snap ring pliers are junk. I also used some thin tipped 90* pliers to remove my HKS SSQV snap ring. My turbo snap ring was being a dick so I just hit the fuck out of it with a mallet to clock it.

Vash-

+1 on bashing on turbo with hammer.

also I doubt hf tools are hardened, hence the fact that they're cheap crap

just bought my rebuild kit from T2, T25, T28 Rebuild Kits . Im gunna try to buy some cheap pliers and modify them today.

i got it off!

i already had the exhaust housing off so i had room to just use regular needle nosed. I modified them using a grinder to make them smaller and then a cut off wheel to put a small groove in them so they would grab the snapring. My first attempt snapped cause i made the groove too deep, so i re- did it. I ended up pulling one side out, putting a screwdriver under the snapring and prying it around the compressor housing till it popped off.

here are some crappy pics using my camera in macro mode

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lol i have a pair of HF 90 degree orange handled plyers turned into snap-ring pliers for turbos. I used either a dremel or an angle grinder. I forget.

i used a bench grinder to narrow the pliers and a pneumatic cut off wheel to put the notch into it.

when I clocked my turbo last night, I found a cheap set of pliers laying around that were perfect, no grinding required. I did however have to compress the ring with my hand to get it back on, the pliers weren't big enough to span the gap between the 2 holes :bang: I like the notches, I'll have to try that

snap rings do suck, but if you invest in a really good set of pliers from <insert really expensive but sometimes actually worth it tool company> they are very much worth the investment.

that being said if it was a one or two time thing i'd probably do what you did