Is a Torque wrench absolutely necessary?

Given the choice of guys to work on my truck I'd pick the guy who torques drain plugs any day. Much rather have someone who knows their limitations than someone who thinks he knows it all.

 

I have to say I use torque wrench almost on everything.
For simple reason, I have ogre hands and I can snap knuckle stud with 3/8 (which I had)
My motto is "do it once do it correctly"
Overtorquing will weaken the setup and undertorquing will weaken the setup. It has to be just right and hitting that just by feel is almost impossible.

 

Sorry if I offended some of your guys.

I guess I take my thinking from my father who has been a successful car mechanic with his own business for 20 years. If my father torqued everything imaginable then he would not make money and just spend time torquing things all day. Time is money..

There is no need to torque an oil drain plug. Seriously. If you have good common sense then there is not need for excess work. But each have their own methods of doing things so no one is wrong here.

 

A torque wrench can prevent you from overtightening as well. Nothing sucks as bad as a sheared bolt or stripped out threads.

 

That reminds me of Mercedes problems from few years ago. They opened up small factory in one of the countries. Hired locals to put luxury Mercedes cars to order. Well people who worked there figured out German process of using torque wrench on absolutely everything was too much burden so they skipped for many bolts. Cars rollout and first complains came in. Mercedes sent its engineers to check what happened and they realized cars left factory with improper torque specs. needles to say there were plenty people fired after that and cars were replaced.


My father is the same but he broke so many bolts in his life that time wasted on fixing them is much more then if he used torque wrench. However, back then Torque wrench was luxury item. Costing in $1000's so home mechanics could not afford and had to improvise. if Torque wrench costed so much today I would be using my hand, but now 10 -150 ft-lb TW costs $30 in Harbor Freight so I use them just like wrench, I dont think it takes more then 10 sec. to set the proper torque spec. So even when I change oil I use it. I rather spent 10 second on setting the torque then whole day fixing stripped oil pan or worst months getting my engine replaced because bolt back out.

 

I understand.... and if it were me, as soon as the truck came back home - I'd be re-doing the lugs with my own tools.

A torque stik doesn't get set. Each torque stik has a value. They're color coded. If they are using a torque stik (which I doubt), they're using the wrong one.

Over-torqueing wheels can actually warp rotors.

 

Yea I do that all the time to clean/re-thread holes. If you do it slow and the bolt isn't vastly softer than the material it's going into it can work pretty well. You do want to be careful to not accidently strip the threading though on the object you're screwing into... that's when a tap/die set is much better. Great tip!

That's a prime example of why it's worth the extra 10-20 seconds to setup a TW to do it right. Yea you might be able to get away with it, but this ensures you will get it right and not have to spend a ton of additional time later to resolve the problem that could have been easily and quickly prevented.

 

Yep, it does not take long and ideally you'd do it every single time on every single fastener. But I've yet to see a mechanic that didn't use his air tools every chance he gets. I'm sure they are out there, but the vast majority of these guys have to do it right and do it fast to make any money. It must work to a point, the shop I take my truck to has had the same couple of guys working there for the last decade. If they were snapping bolts and seizing up spark plugs on customer's vehicles, they would stop with the air tools, I bet.

Personally, when I work on my own vehicle I use the torque wrench on things like head bolts, wheel lug nuts. But drain plugs, spark plugs, caliper bolts, never. I've yet to have an issue.

Time is money. I use my makita electric impact all day long working on HVAC equipment and home appliances. Can't imagine having to torque every screw and bolt. I don't get call backs for that type of stuff either.

There's a lot of people here who work on their own trucks because of their beliefs on issues like this. More power to ya!

 

The first time I saw a guy using a torque stick on my truck, I called him out on it and told him I'd better be able to get those off by hand. He assured me that I could and the stick was calibrated to 80lbs. Went home and checked them all, they were within 5 ft lbs. Maybe your dealer is just using an extension on the air gun, or they could have the air pressure up too high.

 

Only problem I have with torque wrench is figuring out what each bolt has to be torque to. I would probably spend better half of a day looking for torque specs to each bolt I would have to torque. It would be easier if each bolt had the torque spec on the head. That would make things a lot easier.

 

Tourqing things is essential, if you don’t torque it to spec you run the risk of a bolt being lose which can either come apart of stay loose in the bore and vibrate and ruin whatever it is in, if you over tighten you can snap bolts or stretch bolts which can cause major failures due to increased weakness of the hardware. I have seen many cylinder heads damaged due to not following correct torque procedures and sequences on 16l diesel engines

 

torque wrenches are really good although a lot of times i do not use one. I find that in a lot of situations, ie: header bolts, where torque is specified you simply can not access the bolts with a torque wrench due to lack of space. Although it is not good practice to guess I have been guilty many times and have gotten burned a few times with broken bolts.

 

Yes!! 3/8 and 1/2 inch drive.

 

get a craftsman or husky one. lifetime warranty!

 

Air pressure isn't going to affect a torque stik. The stiks will start twisting back-n-forth when they reach their torque limit - thus preventing the drive to the lug nut (or whatever).

Using an extension with a torque stik will probably lessen the torque value to the wheels.

 

yes....i have a snap on digital that vibrates when torque is reach....it's a 3/8 drive inch pounds for motorcycles though......i use a regular 60 buck craftsman 1/2 in drive also

 

I'm surprised this is being debated at all. Production car parts typically have a high margin of safety with oversized bolts. There are applications where even a torque wrench isn't accurate enough, like building race engines for NASCAR, F1, etc. The technician measures each bolt with a dial gauge, writes the length in a chart, and tightens the nut until the bolt is stretched to 75% of yield strength. Here's a $200 ARP bolt stretch gauge for ya:

http://www.race-mart.com/ARP-100-9941.html