Used to torque by feel, now I ruin a socket every time

Back in my jeep days I'd just crank lug nuts until my arms gave out, never had a problem until I snapped a stud on a trail near Moab. Last month I bought a proper torque wrench and followed the spec, but I forgot to check the extension length and twisted a cheap socket into a spiral. Anyone else have a dumb mistake like this that made them question their whole setup?

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kevinc848d ago

Man, that's a rough way to learn about torque extensions! I did something similar but backwards, I used a crow's foot on a brake caliper bolt and didn't account for the offset, so I ended up with way less torque than I thought. The bolt backed out on a mountain pass and I lost a whole caliper bracket. Honestly though, the real trick is to stop trusting the "click" and start paying attention to the angle of the socket. If the handle is floating off to the side, you're not getting the real number, no matter what the wrench says. I keep a set of cheap sockets just for when I'm doing math wrong, ha.