Breakaway Torque on ERA's Powr-Lok

[cycleguy55]

Originally Posted by patrickt

I probably have four or five torque wrenches, but the only beam one I have is a 1/4" drive for very low torque, like inch pounds when working on a carb. Even after doing this stuff for a good 45 years I simply can not torque something down to less than ten ft/lbs and get it anywhere near right. In fact, I'm more likely to crack whatever it is I'm torquing. Any my "clickable" inch/lb torque wrench doesn't click loudly enough for me to feel or hear it, so it's pretty much useless. But, for this particular project, accuracy wasn't all that important. A range of a couple of ft/lbs is good enough.

I have 5 torque wrenches, including an old beam torque wrench - that sits in the bottom of a drawer in my tool chest and hasn't been used in about 3 decades.

I had to replace my 1/4" torque wrench because it stopped clicking and I ended up torquing a couple of bolts WAY tighter than they should have been. It's not good when it's an aluminum automatic transmission valve body. Thankfully I stopped before I stripped any of the threads. I still have the old one and have seen instructions online about how to fix it, but I'm not sure it's worth the time and energy.