Project Hunk of Junk - Don't know my own strength (or cheap tools)

[Dave Price]

This evening after painting the diff casing with Hammerite.  I was looking for a quick little task, I decided to fit the new metric wheel studs that had recently arrived from eBay.  With my wheel nuts being blind nuts rather than open nuts, I thought I would press them in using the vice and a deep socket.  Turning the vice handle, all was going well, the vice got a little stiff to turn, so I grabbed a length of tube to slip over the handle and then continued turning, the stud was progressing well.  Then bang and everything fell on the floor.  I picked up the plate / studs and socket ready to put it back in the vice.  The vice appeared wide open and a little strange, I starred at it for a while and then realised that the casing that forms the front jaw of the vice that split across from the hole for the spindle, leaving only the spindle, handle and the lower half of the jaw.  The other half was on the garage floor..  Well it is (was) a cheap Chinese vice that I bought twenty odd years ago.  Must now go hunting a for real vice.  Anybody got a vice for sale in the Lancashire.  Or does anybody know where I could buy a decent vice (new or second hand)

[Dave Price]

Dave, got back in the garage today after a longer than planned absence.  Starting driving home the studs with careful blows from a hammer, studs going in treat.  I have now replaced the vice, bought a second hand Record vice, far better that the dodgy cheap Chinese vice that I broke.  Thanks for the top tip.

[Dave Adams]

I did the same with my wheel studs...........in the end i did it the way we used to as a mechanic, well aimed taps with hammer, very easy and all is hunky dory.