Wasted 12 hours on a cylinder head gasket job thanks to the wrong torque wrench

Last month I spent an entire Saturday wrestling with a Cummins ISX head gasket, only to find out my cheap torque wrench was off by 40 foot-pounds. Leaked coolant everywhere on the test drive, and I had to pull it all apart again. The $75 tool cost me a full weekend and an extra $30 in gaskets and fluids. Has anyone else been burned by a budget torque wrench that wasn't calibrated right?

3 comments

3 Comments

jordanc3223d ago

Nah man, I gotta push back a little here. I've been burned by cheap tools too, but honestly the issue isn't always the price tag. I've got a $40 beam-style torque wrench from Harbor Freight that's still dead nuts after 8 years, and I've seen guys with $300 Snap-On units that were way off straight out of the box because they got dropped or never stored at zero. The real killer isn't what you paid, it's about not checking them at all. You gotta do a quick test on a bolt and nut setup every so often, just to see if it clicks when you expect it to. Twelve hours is a brutal lesson, but a $10 clicker from Amazon might've been fine if you'd tested it first against your old wrench, you know?

simonh7423d ago

Is twelve hours of your life really worth getting that worked up over a torque wrench?

kelly_west7423d ago

Ha, fair point @jordanc32 - I think the real lesson here is that even cheap tools can work if you actually check them once in a while (which most of us don't bother doing, honestly).