Best budget torque wrench

[Spanner]

Can anyone advise me on a 1/2 torque wrench that doesn't cost the earth which is fine for home use? I have seen the ones they have in Halfords, they have one which goes up to 300nm, but I may not need to go that tight.

What can you suggest? Thanks.

[map]

Depends what you want it for.
I have a small Draper for the small stuff (eg brake mountings).
I have a larger one (from Argos iirc) for larger stuff (eg wheel nuts).
Both do the job they were made to do.
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[Spanner]

General reassembley work, maintenance on my bike and car.

[map]

[_Iain_]

Dont bother.

Unless you find yourself removing cylinder heads & conrods it's not worth it at all. Just tighten the bolts up by hand...this need to use a torque wrench for everything is nonsence - unless you get it recalibrated & store it correctly then it's not even going to be accurate anyway

See thread on clutch rebuild for example of torque wrench causing a bolt to snap that otherwise wouldn't have. Did clutch rebuild, diddnt use torque wrench, no kittens were killed, 10,000 miles later it's still going strong.

[chris-red]

I feel I can't say 'The torque wrench made me do it' I should have know better. But 100% if I hadn't of used it I wouldn't have sheared that bolt.
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[Spanner]

[chris-red]

[Spanner]

Did you contact the manufacturer about the wrench? They should have some after sales interest in that.

[Vincent]

Personally, if on a budget, I'd go for a Beam type wrench as opposed to a mechanical one.
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[barrkel]

I have two, one 1/4", one 3/8". The upper range of the smaller one overlaps with the lower range of the bigger one. That means I can check if they're in the same ballpark with one another to WRT calibration.

Ideally I'd have a third wrench so I'd know which one is off if they were different. I'm also presuming that any calibration affects each end of the range at different rates, which ought to be a reasonable assumption from Hooke's law.
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[Copycat73]

I have three ... considering buyin another ... totally necessary.
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[cdzr]

So overkill for the home mechanic then. What is the rule of thumb for tightening without one. I always use, tighten and then another quarter turn.

[Copycat73]

[cdzr]

[-Matt-]

Fairly amateur with the technical and mechanical stuff to pre-warn.

I've got two torque wrenches as i don't trust myself without them currently, which IIRC are,

1] 8nm-80nm from machinemart for 20 quid or so.

2] 80nm-210nm from argos again around 20 quid or so.

I've read the least accurate torques are at the top and bottom end of the range - may be total bollucks, feel free to confirm anyone , but on that basis i figured most of my bike torques were 15-50ish that i do for general basic maintainence - anything below that i just nip up with allen keys or whatever.

Realistically, the 80-210nm argos wrench i've never used on the bike - its come in handy for the car doing wheels and the like, but unless i get to a stage i feel comfortable disassembling the bike to a greater extent its more a reassurance having it in the box than something thats actually useful to me.

Also i wouldn't buy based on them being 1/2, 1/4 etc, if you get an adaptor kit you can interlink sockets/wrenches regardless. Can get them for peanuts on ebay, just make sure the extended length of the socket area doesn't make you start tightening at a slight angle

[Ichy]

You can roughly test a torque wrench with a spring balance that reads in lbs, one of the cheap luggage scale ones is fine. Set the wrench to 10nm and put it on a bolt for testing, preferably one that is much higher than 10nm. Put the hook of the balance on the wrench handle about a foot from the bolt. Pull on the balance. One Nm is 0.737ft lb so the scales should read around 7.3lbs when the wrench clicks. Given a tolerance of 10% anywhere between 6.5 and 8 is fine.

BTW. I've tested a couple of the ones that sell in Aldi and Lidl. They are pretty good.
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[Walloper]

[Ichy]

[dydey90]

You'd definitely want one for bolting on a new exhaust, especially if you don't have much spanner experience. It's something that a lot of us take for granted, but it does take time to learn at what point a bolt might be about to give or seems too tight.

On bolts of 8mm and above, the general rule is to tighten it, then haul on it until you produce two grunts and a groan.
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[davebike]

There good for novices and for doing very critical jobs like cylinder heads I must say it is a busy week if I use mine but my bolt tightening head has had 5years of profession use =so is fairly well calibrated
Re calibration of cheap torque wrenches is uneconomic unless you find a friendly big workshop with a test set up I just replace if it think it iffy
I only use a 3/8 drive one most of the time if it need more than that will do I have a real big 1/2 job but hardly ever use it a bar and common sense is fine

Dave
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[map]

[Walloper]

[esullivan]

The only place I use a torque wrench is on the main wheel nut, after adjusting my chain. I tighten with a decent (draper) socket wrench until I get the aforementioned two grunts and a groan, and then use this one: clicky and will get another bit of tightening (mostly because of the long handle, probably) before the click.

It's cheap (less than £45), but the wheel hasn't come off yet and I've used it several times.
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[_Iain_]