Torque Wrench

[grebaba]

As a lifelong mechanic I have most major brand's of torque wrench's, Snap-on, Matco, Mac, Proto, Craftsman etc. None of them cheap but I refuse to buy a cheap wrench that might cost me a new engine or tranny build.
Greg

 

[p0g0]

I have a man-in-the-middle digital rig, works off a 1/2" drive (adapt to any drive size you want), accurate to 1/10th of an inch-pound (according to its docs, I haven't tried to calibrate it to prove that). I can torque with allen hex stock, sockets, crows feet, tubing wrenches & screwdrivers with it. Not expensive either.

Now I've rebuilt diesel power units, auto engines, bulldozers, etc over the years. Torque is a bit dicey: galling, worn threads, rust, teflon tape, machine oil, or stuff like never-seize ( a metal rouge & lube compound)- those all change the torsion load. I've stripped aluminum heads rated to 20 ft-lbs at 14! I don't have a better answer but having some sense of what might be changing the thing you're doing to make it off-spec is a skill and an art.

 

[MattiFin]

I wouldn’t have believed it but the GYD-brand digital torque adapters from Temu surprised me with their accuracy. The 30 Nm and 340 Nm adapters matched each other to within less than 0.5%, and when tested with a proper torque wrench calibrator both showed less than 2% error.

With those two, you can basically cover almost all normal DIY torquing tasks.

 

[Daddy Tanuki]

I've stripped aluminum heads rated to 20 ft-lbs at 14! I don't have a better answer but having some sense of what might be changing the thing you're doing to make it off-spec is a skill and an art.

sounds like you changed spark plugs in 5.4

 

[Dagoth Ur Does Solar]

Gonna be real with you guys, as a hobbyist who works on my own cars, I just went with the cheapo Harbor Freight Pittsburgh torque wrenches.

After watching a ton of reviews, I was really shocked to see how even these cheapo wrenches are shockingly accurate. Even in batch testing with multiple wrenches, they're still within a couple percent of where you set them.

The biggest takeaway I had from all my research is, yes, storing the wrench for any substantial period of time with it not set to zero will 100% throw off the accuracy. I have always reset mine to zero when I store them, so it's not been an issue for me, but it was cool to see people confirm that. And also, that most of these cheap torque wrenches are all quite accurate, definitely enough for hobbyist use.

I were a professional I'd buy something nicer. I'm not rebuilding transmissions or engines. I'll trust it on my own lug nuts and oil/transmission pan bolts though.

 

[kc130up]

Anyone have a 1/2 ~15 - 100 ft-lb torque adapter they can recommend?

 

[HRTKD]

Anyone have a 1/2 ~15 - 100 ft-lb torque adapter they can recommend?

I looked for a review of torque adapters by "Project Farm" and "Torque Test Channel" on YouTube but didn't find anything. Lots of torque wrench reviews/tests by those channels. There are gobs of videos for torque adapters on other channels, but none that I'm confident in.

 

[grebaba]

Summit performance used to carry some good ones.
Greg