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Heard a lead mechanic say 'never trust a torque wrench that's been dropped' and realized I've been doing it wrong for 2 years
I was helping out on a C-check in Phoenix last Wednesday and this old timer sees me grab a Snap-on digital torque wrench off the cart. He asks if it's ever been dropped and I laughed like 'probably not.' Then he tells me he watched a guy drop one from waist height and it was reading 5 ft-lbs off on a calibration check the next day. So I pulled up the logbook for that wrench and sure enough it had three 'incidents' logged over 6 months. I never even thought to check that stuff before. Now I'm paranoid about all the bolts I've torqued with that thing. Has anyone else seen a drop mess up readings that bad or am I overthinking it?
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the_olivia11d ago
Hear me out but I think you're overthinking this a bit. Modern digital torque wrenches are pretty tough and the drift from a drop is usually way smaller than people claim. I've dropped my old Precision Instruments torque wrench twice on concrete and it still tested within spec on a checker both times. Plus if you were using it for 2 years before knowing about any drops the most critical stuff probably still made a clicking sound or reached the correct angle. Unless you were torquing cylinder head bolts blindfolded I bet most of your work is fine.
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shanef3411d ago
Man that's rough but yeah I've seen it happen more than once. I always drop test mine against a known good beam wrench after any drop now, catches most of the drift. You probably aren't hosed on everything you've torqued but I'd start double checking with a different wrench on anything critical from now on.
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