Hi I sick of stripping threads and over tightening stuff.

I need one for bike stuff approx 1nm to 25nm and another that can go higher 25nm to maybe 200nm.

Has anyone any recommendations of what to buy?

Thanks Diz

Norbar, you can get them on Amazon for £70 ish and they are very, very good indeed. Much better than

That’s a lot of money for home maintenance. I would just look on Wiggle, Ribble, CRC etc and find the right ones. You will need two but to start with I’d just go for the smaller one for the lighter fittings like bar and stem bolts. They are all calibrated and even if the wrench was a little inaccurate it would at least ensure you had everything torqued up evenly.

That’s a lot of money for home maintenance.

I guess it depends how you think about it. I like working on my bikes, and none are cheap bikes so £70 to make sure things are being tightened properly and not being damaged seems like good value to me. Plus there’s the confidence that it’s a good tool, the bike specific old torque wrench I used previously I had little confidence it was doing things up to the right level.

I guess it depends how you think about it. I like working on my bikes, and none are cheap bikes so £70 to make sure things are being tightened properly and not being damaged seems like good value to me. Plus there’s the confidence that it’s a good tool, the bike specific old torque wrench I used previously I had little confidence it was doing things up to the right level.

+1, I’ve had a Norbar SLO 1/4″ drive for several years now and it’s been excellent, better to be safe than sorry with the ever increasing use of small fasteners and carbon/titanium/alloy components.

Norbar, 3/8″ drive, here, 1/4″ drive also available. Bloody lovely tool.

+1 norbar – excellent customer service, life time warranty and they’ll
recalibrate it if you need that level of precision 🙂

Norbar purchase.

Thank you all.

Sealey 2-24nm here.

Just be aware torque wrenches really need calibrating and maintaining on a regular basis, and are also not accurate at the extreme ends of the scale.

Personally 10Nm or under I’d hand tighten now after snapping a bolt in frame. I felt it was going way too tight but wrench hadn’t clicked, and snap. Been told aside from calibration issues, it could be thread lock that upsets the torque also.

I still use my big wrench for big stuff. Though mine doesn’t work properly for reverse threads. Has the reverse switch but it never clicks, though think it did once. I won’t trust it for reverse threads. For crank, pedals etc I’ll do the normal side first and then judge the other by feel to be roughly the same.

I had a torque wrench that had stopped clicking so I followed a guide online to take it apart to fix it. Quite interesting how they actually work, never really thought about it but they’re very simple inside. You can easily test & recalibrate them yourself with a bit of time.

Been told aside from calibration issues, it could be thread lock that upsets the torque also.

Any compound added to the threads will make a difference, the more lubricated the lower the target torque (since it turns easier you can over stretch the screw with the same torque) and vice versa.

You can easily test & recalibrate them yourself with a bit of time.

How do you do that without a rig then? Genuinely interested.

^^ I would guess with a second wrench which you trust

Clamp the square drive in the end of a vice, with the handle positioned so that a sufficient weight hung off it would result in a ‘click’.

Hang a sufficient weight, at a measured distance from the square.

Weight in kilos, times 9.81, times distance in metres, equals torque in Nm.

A 2 litre bottle of water would represent approx 20 Newtons, multiplied by the 0.2 metre long handle on a typical small wrench, would give you 4Nm.

At least, that’s one way to do it…