nothing to my knowledge. i started out asking what HF stood for, then i saw harbor freight on the coupon. guess i should have worded it better.

 

....yeah, I didn't know what HF was at first either, lol.

Do torque wrenches get 'out of sync' or require adjustment/tuning after a lot of use? Or some type of maintenance work?

 

If you are going to be using it for hard core work like engine internals and stuff a calibration would be money well spent. But you usually use a good brand tool for that stuff if you can.

 

short answer is yes. how much? i dont know. could you keep a wrench in your garage for 10 years and it still be spot on? yeah sure.

in the airforce, our torque wrenches were all sent to PMEL for calibration on 6 month intervals. torque wrenches are also supposed to be kept on the lowest setting when bieng stored in the tool kits (not twisted all the way out, whatever the lowest number is thats on the wrench). your also supposed to break them on the highest setting 6 times before using it to "break it in" and get consistant torque from it. also, if you twist it past the highest or lowest setting (by more than a hair obviously) the wrench was supposed to be sent to pmel for cal also because it can stretch the springs. same thing if you drop it from more than a few inches.

you will notice the torque wrench will usually say something like, accurate to X% +/- (see cliffys original post, its 4% for this wrench). that means if you torque to 50 inch pounds, its accurate to 50 inch pounds give or take 4 percent. the things above CAN affect that 4 percent. it could throw it up to 8 percent, or something way way off. usually by the time we sent our wrenches to pmel a few times, they would come back failing because they could not be calibrated within the specified percent range in one or both directions.

now thats the military. if it came back at 4.5 percent, the wrench was bad. is this still good for the average joe changing a spark plug in his garage? yes.

 

I love HF! It comes in real handy when you need a specialty tool that you will only use a time or two and don't want to spend a fortune on another company's tool.

 

+1, all good info!

 

I've had two HF torque wrenches, a 3/8 drive and a 1/2 inch drive and both broke relativly quickly. The 1/2 drive broke my 3rd time using it to torque down wheel lug nuts. My 3/8 wrench broke while tigtening a swing arm bolt on my motorcycle. As far as being made in china, I mainly own craftsman and snap-on tools but everytime I go into sears anymore they have new wrenches or tools that seem like great innovative tools but sadly enough they are also made in china and other overseas company even thought they brand the craftsman name. I beleive the only craftsman tools still made in the USA are regular sockets/ratchets and wrenches.

 

Most people that have been doing this for awhile know what 13-15 ft lbs feels like. I must have been doing something right with 700rwhp and 23lbs of boost and no spark plug blow out.

 

Do you take the same attitude with your internals when you put your block together? I would imagine you dont. Whats the difference? I dont understand why people are so stubborn when it comes to stuff like this, then they wonder WTF went wrong when there standing over their head putting a timesert in.

It takes all of 30sec longer to properly torque down something. To me its not worth the money later on if I dont happen to get the torque range right by "feel". If there is a widely known torque spec for something, why not use it?

 

Of course I use a torque wrench with with higher torque bolts. Tighten the spark plug hand tight then turn the wrench just past 90* that is the same as 13-15 ft lbs. Try it with a torque wrench and see for yourself.

Do you torque your fuel rail bolts to the proper in lbs?