Originally Posted by mpetry912

I pretty much agree with you here, the torque wrench is at best a useful guideline for those who have not had the opportunity to work on 100s of bikes and develop a "feel" for what is right.

Exactly what you feel when you do it by hand. For classic Campy this ends up being about 220 in/lb. What I've experioenced on the Stronglight cranks (49, 57, 93) is that you never get to anywhere near that torque value. You just keep turning the wrench !


** Hard to overtighten with a Campy peanut butter wrench. On Stronglight, that is another story. Could be why the old Stronglight socket-on-a-stick “wrench” would bend if you honked on it.



For other types of assemblies in which failure of a fastener would be of high consequence

In many cases there is an actual step to accumulate evidence of this - do you know what a "Jo-Bolt" is ? Used in aerospace applications, the head breaks off when the specified torque is reached. Fifty bucks a shot.


** Similar style bolts are sometimes spec’d for structural steel. As the usual wrench is a not always close to being accurate preset pneumatic, the twist-off can be seen from a distance to provide assurance to an inspector (me) that adequate torque was applied. Otherwise, an inspector would have to take a torque wrench to check a percentage of the fasteners.


But what do I know?

/markp