The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Torque Wrench Update

I've got a couple clickers (1/2" and 3/8") and an old Craftsman 1/2" pointer (gift from Mom and Dad about 50 years ago). I'd like to upgrade to the digital torque wrench. Can anyone recommend a decent brand that's reasonably priced?

Define "reasonably priced".

What range do you need? Do you want/need to do angle measurements for TTY bolts?

I recently bought this one when I was replacing the heads on my suburban and it is really nice:

ACDelco ARM303-4A-340
https://a.co/d/a2kkFSI

I particularly like that it starts beeping slowly as you approach the set point, then vibrates and goes solid when you reach it. It also gives you final torque values that you can check to see if you overshot (or see what TTY bolts ended up at).

I would not hesitate to buy it again, but it was not cheap.

Good questions. This is a tool that I would probably use about a dozen times a year. The clickers I have are from a FLAPS. They have served me well over the years, but after a while I question the accuracy of them. I had to replace the 1/2" drive under a lifetime warranty earlier this year.

As far as reasonable cost, I could certainly justify $250-$300. I need something for up to 200 inch pounds and one that would work for up to 200 foot pounds.

I'll take a look at the ACDelco torque wrenches. How would I check the ones I have for accuracy?

Thanks,

I have checked mine against my old school beam torque wrench, not much to go wrong with those as long as the pointer starts at zero.

That's a bargain at twice the price! In fact, somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 is what I spent on my last click type.

If it sets anyone's mind at ease, we have some 3/4" drive, click type that have been abused and thrown in to drawers for the last 30+ years or so. A few years back they bought all our shops some torque wrench checkers. Those old wrenches were still accurate!

When I was doing warranty claim inspections I used a Snap-On click type wrench that had to be calibrated once a year. It never failed to pass the annual check, with little if any adjustment required. The big thing to remember is to release the spring tension on the adjustment immediately after the wrench is used. Leaving the wrench adjusted to a specific torque can result in the spring taking a set and getting inaccurate at other settings.
Jerry

Read the manual!

I remember seeing that in the instructions in all three torque wrenches I've had my whole life. I always set them to zero when I'm done.

I also check one against the others to make sure they're all accurate. I've never had to calibrate any of them. Maybe they're all inaccurate by exactly the same amount?

The yearly calibration was needed in case I might get called to be an "expert witness". The few times it looked like that might happen, the legal beagles read my report and decided they really didn't want me making monkeys out of them on a witness stand and either dropped the suit or settled out of court.
Jerry

I've run/programmed, multimillion dollar cnc machine tools, and I still don't trust any electronic digital anything. I've had digital test instruments fail many times.
Your plain SOL if the battery goes dead and you can't get a new one right away.

I've had really good luck with Precision Instruments split beam torque wrenches. They're identical to Mac but can find them really reasonably priced on the internet.