Dug out my old torque wrench from 1999...

Pulled my old Snap-On torque wrench out of the bottom of the box yesterday to check a bolt on a 737 flap carriage. That thing clicked at exactly 65 ft-lbs like the day I bought it, but my newer digital one was reading 58. Calibrated the old one against a test bar and it was dead nuts. Learned never to assume new gear is more accurate.

3 comments

3 Comments

joseph_ellis854mo ago

Dig into that Snap-On any deeper - did you have to adjust the calibration screw at all or was it still dead-on from the factory? I've always wondered if those old beam-style wrenches hold up better than the click types over 20+ years of sitting in a damp tool box. Also curious if you're seeing a drift trend on the digital one or if it was just a one-time hiccup.

rileyb614mo ago

Nah the beam was still dead on actually, I didn't touch the calibration screw at all because it was reading within a foot-pound of my reference torque gauge after all those years. The click types tend to drift more from the oil getting gummy and the mechanism sticking, especially if you never back them off to zero before storage. As for the digital one, it was just a one-off glitch from a dying battery, swapped it out and it's been solid since.

johnson.faith4mo ago

Did I used to think digital was always better? Honest answer is yeah, I was one of those guys who thought newer tech meant better accuracy. But reading your experience with the Snap-On definitely hit home. Last year I had a brand new digital multimeter that was giving me voltage readings way off from what my old analog one showed, and I trusted the digital one at first too. Turns out the old analog was right, just like your beam torque wrench. Kind of makes you realize those simple mechanical tools don't have as much to go wrong with them. Digital gear has batteries and circuit boards that can fail at any time without warning. I bet that Snap-On will still be accurate long after that digital one is in the trash.