Looking for torque wrench like or hate

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CopperNick

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Feb 20, 2018
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HUH, thought I had closed this thread out. Finally chose to go with 1/4 drive click break torque wrench. Got two, one a tekton and the other an comparable brand. Both have a least torque value of 25 in/lbs. Tested the two against each other and both broke free at exactly the same torque value. About the same time I sent my 1/2 Gray out for verifying and it came back as being completely in tolerance. Can't begin to recall when I bought it. My LS-6 manifold had a listed torque spec of 87 in/lb for its bolts.




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rogue_ryder

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Oct 27, 2017
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I had to break down and buy 1/4" Torque Wrench a few years ago and went with the Tekton as well

In case others are shopping for Torque Wrenches:

I would say for the casual hobbyist the Tekton Torque wrenches are going to be one of your best bangs for the buck. Snap-On are (were? probably still are) incredibly good, I worked on a large legacy Aerospace program and we were using the Snap-On Dial indicator models from the 70s day in and day out. They went to the Metrology lab every year and always came back in spec. Today when we're buying tools for a new program, 99% likelihood Snap-On is not going to be procured; it's more likely that we'd purchase Proto because they can be procured through Grainger, MSC etc. and are accepted industry wide as being a quality tool at a more reasonable price than Snap-On that'll get the job done just as well. In the Aerospace industry a tool that comes back from Metrology and they deem it was out of Calibration could cost you $10s of thousands of dollars in paperwork, analysis etc. So we're still buying quality tools just not Snap-On. Today I believe Snap-On is still #1 in the tool business because they've marketed themselves so well and are a finance company first and a tool company 2nd, when you compare the quality of their tools to the competition the extra 20-100% cost is often not justified because you can buy an equally good tool for that much less. Lots of mechanics choose to buy Snap-On over Matco, MAC or Cornwell because they A) need the payment plan and B) the Tool truck comes by the shop every week and lets you swap out broken tools and the competition just doesn't come around often enough and making your living with your tools you can't afford to be without that broken tool for weeks.

A Snap-On torque wrench will run you ~$380 for a 1/4" at the moment guaranteed to 3% accuracy but so is the 1/4" eTork over the same range 40-200 in/lbs (I have an eTork in 1/2" for torqueing Cylinder heads & Main Caps), and honestly there's very few hobbyists that will use the Snap-On enough to justify the expense. The Snap is good for 7500 cycles between calibration, will a $60 eTork do that? Heck No! but the average hobbyist probably wouldn't use their 1/4" torque wrench that much in 2 lifetimes.
 
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