Over the course of this year I’ve spent some time exploring the subject of torque and torque wrenches. I worked on and overhauled our best torque wrenches buyers guide earlier in the year. My research on this and my interest in the topic generally led to the creation of a few pieces of work on the subject.
I did some research and spoke to aircraft, bike and automotive mechanics from other industries, comparing their experience and use of torque compared to the bike industry. Comparing knowledge from mechanics in different industries provided some useful insights and comparisons as well as some tips to take away and possibly implement when working with bikes. I also spoke to several large tool manufacturers to get some tips and best practice advice straight from the top on using torque with bike fasteners and how to best care for your own tools and torque wrenches.
This final torque piece follows up on a point that has been mentioned several times in these pieces and that was repeated by both manufacturers and mechanics alike. This was to ensure that torque wrenches are regularly calibrated to ensure accuracy can be ensured long term. Most manufacturers recommend and can provide yearly calibrations around every 50,000 clicks (uses), or every 12 months, whichever comes first. A torque wrench that has been in use for years, used as an emergency breaker bar, dropped, or left set etc may not be working accurately any more which means potentially over or under-tightened bolts and inaccurate or even unsafe work.
Instead of speculating, we found some battle-weary torque wrenches and booked them in for calibration testing. The visit was really interesting, I learnt an awful lot and it threw up some really useful points if you own or work with bikes and torque wrenches.
Several of the representatives we spoke to from tool manufacturers cited a potential need for increased awareness in the bike industry when it comes to re-calibrating torque tools to ensure accuracy. I’ve also never personally sent a torque wrench for calibration or heard of a shop doing it in my years working as a mechanic, and most mechanics I spoke with said they hadn’t usually bothered. Some mechanics I asked during my research even said they just brought new…
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