Murray Tools' Split Thread Repair Dies feature a spring design that allows users to pull the die apart and position on a damaged bolt or stud below the damaged threads. Then, using a six-point deep well socket, users chase the threads clean, fast and easy, and no cross threading.
The review
Alex Portillo, the shop foreman at Car Clinic, a repair shop in Mahopac, NY, still does undercar work. Because of this, he runs across rusted and damaged studs and bolts on a regular basis. So, when he was sent a thread repair kit from Murray Tools, he was skeptical that they would offer him anything different than the thread repair dies he already used.
"They work just like any other thread repair taps out there, just like the ones I already own," Portillo observes. "I like to start at the top of the thread to clean it up with the big side pointing down, work all the way down to the bottom and then reverse my ratchet and work my way up again.
"The benefit of these Murray thread repair taps is that they can be used even when the top of the thread is too badly mangled or rusted to retap. I just used them to retap studs when doing strut mounts on a 1996 Nissan Maxima. I was able to simply start from the bottom first, work my way up and then back down. With a traditional tap, that's impossible."
Portillo also liked that the slit-die design allowed him to put the taps "in spots I would've never imagined with a regular die."
"The one thing I'd like changed is the stability of the tap," says Portillo. "Because they use spring tensioning, they sometimes are a fraction of an inch cockeyed one way or the other. You really have to shove the socket on it to hold it down straight.
"It can be tough to get it just right...I prefer the stability of a traditional tap, but the Murray thread repair dies offer the ability to retap studs and bolts that cannot be tapped using a traditional tool. They're good because you never know when you're going to need a die that fits somewhere a normal one can't."
