Blew $350 on a torque wrench that turned out to be way off

Picked up a fancy digital torque wrench for a critical job on a Cessna 172 last Monday, thought it was the best move ever. Clamped down a cylinder base nut and the whole thing felt wrong, so I checked it against my old beam style and it was clicking 15 ft-lbs early. Anyone ever had a brand new tool fail like that straight out of the box?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennifer_west5219d ago

Man that’s rough, but honestly makes me feel a little better about the time I used a cheap digital level from Harbor Freight on a deck project and the bubbles were just straight up lying to me. My whole bench ended up sloping like a water park slide. You dropping 350 on a wrench that’s off by 15 pounds is brutal though. Did it at least give you a cool error code or just click happy and leave you with a loose nut?

milac3719d ago

Did yours at least come with a sad beep when it hit that 15 pound mark, or did it just fake it like a bad date? Sounds like your deck project could've used that wrench as a level and saved you the trouble.