Torque wrench drama, strip a seatpost clamp or trust the feel?

Last Tuesday in my shop in Spokane I had a carbon frame come in for a simple seatpost swap. My cheap beam torque wrench read 5 Nm but the clamp threads gave out at maybe 4, totally my fault for not testing it first. I told the owner straight up and ate the $60 repair cost for a new clamp and insert. Now I'm stuck debating whether I should drop $200 on a digital wrench or just keep using the calibrated feel method I learned from an old mechanic who never stripped anything. Has anyone else had a torque wrench lie to them and how did you handle the customer fallout?

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1 Comment

nancyd8515d ago

That sixty bucks stings but honestly you got off cheap, a lesson for under a hundred is a deal. Ive had a beam wrench drift out of calibration after getting bounced around in a toolbox for years, theyre not magic. But dropping two hundred on a digital one wont stop you from grabbing the wrong setting or forgetting the battery is dead, you know? The real fix is just testing your gear on a junk part every so often, takes two minutes. And the customer, most of them just want to hear you own it and fix it, which you did, so I wouldnt lose sleep over it.