A customer's question made me see my own shop differently

Had a talk with a retired trucker named Don last Tuesday at the counter. He asked why I torque wheel studs instead of just zipping them with an impact like his nephew does. I gave him the textbook answer about stretch and clamping force, but he just nodded and said 'so you trust the numbers, not the feel.' That hit me because I realized I'd been doing torque specs by habit for 14 years without really explaining the why to myself. Has anyone else had a customer's simple question expose a blind spot in how you work?

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wyatt51321d ago

Honestly, the “trust the numbers, not the feel” part stuck with me too. But I gotta push back a little on that, because torque specs aren’t about ignoring feel, they’re about making feel repeatable. Your hand can’t tell you the difference between 85 and 95 ft-lbs on a good day, but a wrench can. That said, Don’s point still works, because most guys I know learned torque by just cranking until it felt right, then checking it later with a clicker and finding they were way off.