I recently bought a carbon bike and am scared to death of over torquing bolts. It seems everything on the bike mentions the nM that is safe to torque to. So, I want to buy a torque wrench. I want something reliable and accurate and don't want to waste money, if not necessary. I've searched previous threads, but didn't find anything specific. Nashbar and Performance Bike have their own brands that look to be identical. Park Tools has their brand that is a little higher priced. Any suggestions?

Mine are made by Shap-On and on the barrel is engraved a double scale, ft-lbs alongside N m.

also, forgot to ask, do you go with 1/4 or 3/8 drive? Seems like it's hard to find hex bits for anything other than 3/8 unless you buy one of the kits specifically for bikes. 1/4 probably fits around the small nooks and crannies of a bike better, though.

I bought mine off Amazon. I'm pretty certain most of the entry level adjustable torque wrenches for bikes from Nashbar, Performance, etc are all made by the same company and are just rebranded. Never had any issues with mine. Just make sure you buy a wrench that has the proper torque range for what you're using it for.

Bought the Park Tool about a month ago & highly recommend it. Worth the price.

I've used a lot of torque wrenches in a previous career and truthfully, I have not noticed a lot of difference in performance between a Harbor Freight and a Snap-On. The real "secret" is to use a correctly sized wrench. Don't use an 800 Nm wrench to tighten a bolt to 25 Nm.
I suggest buying an affordable set of wrenches to cover the range of torque settings you need.

Thank you. I'm not trying to be dense, but all the wrenches I'm seeing are adjustable between somewhere around 2-20 nM. Are you saying specific wrenches for each torque setting? Do you have an example of a set?

Snap-On 3/8 drive = approx 3 - 60 ft-lbs
Snap-On 1/2 drive = approx 60-230 ft-lbs (and other 1/2 drives are available for other ranges and the same holds for 1/4 Snap-On torque wrench)

I bought one of these: Amazon.com: CDI Torque Wrench Tool with Bits: Sports & Outdoors



Have had carbon bikes for years and never had a small torque wrench. Just didn't tighten anything too hard.

99% of my tools are S/K, so i have a S/K 1/2" and 3/8" torque wrench, so naturally i purchased a S/K 1/4" drive. Honestly it's not cheap... about $180, but i feel tools are an investment.

The park torque wrench will do the job, i'd avoid cheap ones and never buy a tool from Harbor Freight.

I decided to get two of the beam torque wrenches.

One is the Park Tool TW-1, 1/4" drive, 0 - 7 Nm.

The other is a K/D Tool, 3/8" drive, 0 - 100 Nm.

With those two, I believe I have everything covered.

What if you need to tighten a 46mm axle nut?

3/4" Matra beam wrench.

I have two words for you: Harbor Freight

Same here. With beam wrenches you kinda need 2 to cover the range of torque specs on a modern(and older) bikes-1/4" is Park, my 3/8" is a craftsman.

i also have 4,5 Nm Torqkeys, which are super handy for many applications on the bike.

I try to stay between 25% and 75% of the maximum setting for the wrench, and the closer to 50%, the better. Obviously how close depends on how many wrenches you have. There is no easy answer to how many wrenches. Just allocate your money as best you can and add tools when you can afford them.

An experience calibrated hand is all you really need.

I was surprised to find that after years of tightening fasteners by feel, finally broke down and got the torque key with my first carbon bike.

Turns out that I've been torquing small fasteners on aluminum and steel bikes at a hair under 5 N-m all along.

More Volkswagen torture......Noooooooooo!!! (Intake manifolds, distributors & condensers......oh my!)

And when we needed to torque axle nuts.......back in the day it was you & a buddy on the breaker bar til you both couldn't go any further, but you could just get the cotter pin thru. Of course that was 36mm, not 46. 46 would probably require 2 buddies.

wait 2 months when sears is having their black friday sale, pick up a 3/8" craftsman for $40, profit.

you can get 3/8-1/4 stepdowns and extensions for tight places if that tickles your fancy

One word: CRAP


A 3/8" will have too high a scale for a carbon bike.

I have a 3/8" Snap On torque wrench from back in my mechanic days...expensive and nice and it works well and the clicks are positive. For bike stuff, I like the 1/4" and the 3/8" drive beam wrenches though. They work fine and I honestly feel they are easier to read.

I think I need glasses though.

The Park Tool TW-5 is a good choice but pricey at $100 the Craftsman Micro Clicker Torque Wrench covers the same tightening specs as the Park and is on sale now for $58.00 Sears.com

Got any quantitative test results to back that up? I have 1/4" and 1/2" HF torque wrenches and they both test within +/-5% at mid range. Can you buy a much better wrench for a lot more money? Sure. But it's a bicycle, not a Delta V rocket -- the need for extreme precision and accuracy simply doesn't exist.

OP, the cheapest, crappiest torque wrench you can find will be plenty good enough for bicycle use. If you're only dealing with the basic stuff, the Ritchey torque keys are pre-set and super convenient. I use them to assemble my bike when traveling since they pack much smaller and lighter than a "proper" torque wrench.

Specifically... no.

But I have a number of friends that have purchased tools from Harbor Freight and found them to be substandard.

Wrenches and sockets that should be 13mm are 13.5mm or so. Leak down testers with gauges that are off. Jack stands that have welds that cracked.

US General is generally crap.

Tools are an investment, I still have S/K sockets that I purchased in 1968 when I was 12. The only time they broke was when I abused them by adding a pipe to the breaker bar.

The smaller of the Park wrenches is in the right range for the majority of the bike uses. The only real exceptions would be something like the bolt to fasten the crankarm.

It may have already been said, but if not, a caution: don't let a torque wrench make you lazy. You still can't just crank it down to a given spec. Manufacturers usually supply a 'max torque' spec, but a) max torque often isn't necessary to keep things in place and b) it's not necessarily safe to assume that the torque figure won't crunch the **** out of your post/bars/frame/whatev.

A couple of my Snap-On breaker bars dating from the 1920s-30s have really nice knurling on the handles. Using a pipe-breaker like you did, I switch over to using sockets made for impact wrenches. Those sockets have really thick walls as you already know!