Budget Torque Wrench Throwdown

[padroo]

Torque wrenches should always be set at their lowest value when being stoted.

When I was in school you checked out a torque wrench, checked it's calibration every day, kind of extreme but you always returned them to the lowest setting.

 

[sns1938]

I never understood the "Good enough for occasional use" notion with a torque wrench. If a torque wrench is bad, it's bad if I use it once a year or 300 times a year.

My torque wrenches are a C-man beam type, two of the old Kobalt USA models, an Autocraft and a C-man that "releases" at the set torque.

Coach

If you're torquing bolts that many would just do without a torque wrench, then an inaccurate/cheap one is fine. E.g. wheel lug nuts. The car manufacturers don't give you a torque wrench in the trunk of the car, so clearly getting exactly the torque in the manual isn't required, so getting within 5% with a HF wrench is actually better than needed. For that reason, I have the HF 1/2''. but then a Facom 1/4'' for some ''precision'' work I do on other applications.

 

[MushCreek]

I love all the chatter about torque wrenches, when no one ever talks about the condition of the fastener. Clean threads? Rusty? Galled? Greasy? All of those things make a huge difference in the amount of bolt stretch you're gonna get for a given torque setting. To get an accurate amount of tension on a fastener, you'd have to make sure that the threads are clean, undamaged, lubed (or not, depending on the specs). Even thread locker or anti-seize changes the way a fastener tightens down. I had a crummy old scissors jack, and it could barely raise an empty boat trailer, until I lubed the threads. It became effortless. Same amount of torque; far different results.

All that being said, I'd like to get a better torque wrench myself for some upcoming projects. I have an ancient Craftsman beam type, which is fine when you're working in a position where you can actually read the thing. I'm in the same boat as the OP- not gonna spend a fortune for working on an old truck and a farm tractor.

 

[dutchgray]

I read on the Norbar website some time ago, they set their wrenches at a value and left them for a month or more to test the return to low value notion. It made no difference provided the wrench was exercised a few times before use at that value.
Personally I have decent torque wrenches for the small amount of use I have. Going cheap on any precision measuring equipment is asking for trouble.

 

[justanengineer]

This is BS... FYI, they make clicker torque wrenches designed for uses at fixed values. You just set and forget them. For that you need a calibration device... But they don't lose spec once in use. They just need recalibration at their service intervale (say, 5000 clicks).

JME in a production environment, but the fixed value torque wrenches were supposed to be checked daily with the local checker and sent to the in-house gage shop monthly at most, seeing 10%+ error after a month bc the line techs didnt check/didnt report errors are pretty common.

Even with adjustable clickers, standard cal interval in most shops is 6 months so I'm not sure why leaving them at a fixed point would be a good idea, nvm with a HF wrench which arent repeatable enough to bother calibrating IME.