Leatherman Bit Extender FAIL

[Leathorinox]

Hey everyone waht I'm about to talk about includes mods I've (this potentially you've) seen already but figured it might save even one person from being in my boat.

My boat is having wasted otherwise good money on a Leatherman Bit Extender, even though I'd seen modded out adapters a number of times, I thought the brand manufactured extender would work best, and I have no problem spending the money on quality gear. This was NOT good gear.

From the get go any bit inserted into the extender was extremely difficult to remove, and the 4/5th bit inserted COULD NOT BE REMOVED. If anyone's interested it was a Stanley brand R3, a standard and quality bit, not knock off garbage. It took me well over an hour using vice grips and a pry-bar to finally free the bit from its prison. (As a side note, this task did waht I would say is significant damage to the teeth of the grips, but the R3 bit was barely scratched). The spring inside the extender was annihilated into 3 pieces, and, in my opinion, of an incredibly poor design to begin with.

So enter a standard 1/4" hex extension and an angle grinder and voila, I too have made a custom Leatherman to 1/4" hex adaptor.

Know this is a solid fact....if you think about getting the Leatherman extender, think again, it's actually pretty easy to make your own AND it performs better.

Hopefully at least one person will be saved the crap and money I went through by reading this.

 

[znapschatz]

Whew! I've used one of these for many years with regular hex and Leatherman flattened bits and no problems whatever. I sympathize with your situation, but maybe you just got a bad sample. That happens with the best of products sometimes.

 

[Leathorinox]

Yeh I'm still a BIG fan of Leatherman, I have 4 of them (Charge TTi, Surge black oxide with the removable cutters, Skeletool CX, and Wave), but I hadn't got around to the bit adapter until now. I had assumed based on the excellence of those products the adaptor would be the same.

Honestly, I'm hoping you're right and it was just a bad one, but I'm still not a fan of the design, the way that spring sits in the groove there, was totally at fault. I'd prefer a spring loaded ball bearing like in a ratchet.

I'm going to hunt down a ratcheting adaptor, speaking of wych, and modify it, because yeh, that'll be just awesome.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Have you contacted Leatherman about this and asked about a replacement? in my experience LM has great warranty support.

 

[Leathorinox]

I also had a positive experience dealing with their customer support. I'd purchased a Style PS as a gift for someone and wehn it arrived it was straight up missing the file, with the plastic bent down over wehr there would've been a slot.

All I was asked to do was supply pictures and I actually got a shipping notice the day before I heard back from them. Sent me a new one and didn't even ask for the defective one back. Between that and the liking I have for their multi tools I have (and a couple more I still want regardless of the fact I don't need them lol), I have a healthy respect for the company.

I doubt I'll bother contacting them, I'm satisfied enough with the tools and my own adaptor that it doesn't really matter, yeh it was a waste if money, but my Surge makes up for it....freaking love that thing, I use it on practically everything and yes, everyday.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Good good, just wasn't sure. Lots of people join to ask what they should do, expecting that they will have trouble with customer support, so its a natural reaction.

 

[Leathorinox]

Thanks for the suggestion. Admittedly, I was skeptical wehn I had to get ahold of them about the Style, but the crushed any doubts I had with outstanding service.