What range do you need in a torque wrench for a bike? If you cant get a wrench with a wide enough range for everything, what’s the lowest torque setting you’d generally need?

Lidl have a fairly heavy duty TUV approved torque wrench for £12.99 but I think it only went as low as 20Nm which I suspect may be too high.

0-20Nm

Depends on the bike, I’ve got one tha goes right down to 2NM, as I needed a really low one for carbon stems etc. as some of those are only 5NM max torque. HT2 LH cranks are 12-15NM etc.
If you only want it for crank bolts & the like that’ll be fine, but if you want it for the smaller things it’s not really much use

I know I’ll get slated for this, but I don’t think you really need a torque wrench for a bike. Stuff is either finger tight (headset/bb preload), snug (levers and shifters), tight (nearly everything else) or right-tight (cassette lockring).

4Nm – 40Nm should cover just about everything – if you can find one

You’re right IHN you don’t need one
since when has need been a requirement for buying tools? 😀

Think mine is about 8 – 50nm, but it cost £60! Covers pretty much all bolts on bikes though. As to if you need one or not – depends how many bolts you’ve snapped off or have come loose in the past I guess. I have snapped a few, so figured it’s a worthwhile investment.

do the IHN approach but never snapped a bolt or had one come loose but I do check them during a service and have a rough idea of force required (higher the number greater the force innit?)

They’re quite expensive if you buy one with the lower torque settings. I only bought one after buying carbon bars and to be honest, it’s quite enjoyable (Sad!) to tighten all you bolts to the specified setting.

since when has need been a requirement for buying tools?

That is a very valid point. Buy a few, in a range of, er, ranges 🙂

I have a decent torque wrench that I originally got for doing the valves on my motorbike. Too high range for a lot of push bike stuff. Sort of agree with IHN. When I’ve wanted to be careful (anal) about a torque setting in the past I’ve got out a spanner/allen key/socket, measured the length and pulled it with a spring balance

I have developed the ‘size of bolt’ thory (soon to be patented). The smaller the bolt, the smaller the tool, the less force needed to tighten. Also spend a minute to think about what the bolt is used for, then tighten appropriately…