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The $40 torque wrench from harbor freight versus the $280 snap-on finally made sense to me
I rebuilt a full suspension frame over the weekend and stripped two bolts with the cheap wrench. It read 5nm but it was actually putting out around 8nm. Took the frame to a shop in Portland and the mechanic there showed me how to check calibration with a simple beam style wrench. Now I get why shops charge so much for the fancy one, it is not about the brand name, it is about knowing your tool is telling the truth. Has anyone else had a budget tool fail them in a way that cost more than just buying the good version first time?
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tyler8541mo ago
Plenty of guys have run cheap torque wrenches for years without stripping anything, so maybe the tool was just dropped or stored wrong at some point and you never checked it. A beam wrench can go out of spec too, it just fails in a way you can actually see instead of clicking wrong. The real issue sounds less like price and more like nobody checks calibration until after something breaks.
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