Time for new hardware and am wondering if i can trust the 32.95 job from harbor freight. Anyone have any shop time on these and are they worth a darn?


Thanks

 

I bought the 3/8 (5 to 80 lbs) from them when it was on sale for $11.99. I was a bit skeptical with it's accuracy because of brand but was willing to take a chance for the price.

So, when I got it home I put it up to the challenge against my better more expensive Craftsman torque wrench and it was spot on.

I'm happy with it and now trust it's accuracy. Can't beat the price.
Just remember to take it off load (back to Zero) as most torque wrenches need to be when storing it.

 

I've been getting by with the Harbor Freight torque wrench since I bought my D2 last summer. I don't know that I'd want to use it to torque my head bolts, but it seems to do quite nicely for everything else...

 

Thanks for the info. I am doing doing my Transmission and T case, but my wrench is shot, so its time for another.

 

I'd calibrate it, then check it periodically to make sure it's consistent.

 

Thats good to hear on the Harbor Freight torque wrench. I have heard on here from others that is is a decent wrench. Right now I have a Kobalt 100lbs from Lowes which seems to work fine. I have heard that torque wrenches are more accurate within half their max range. So a 100lbs torque wrench would be most accurate to 50lbs and a 200lbs torque wrench would be most accurate at 100lbs. I may spring for the 200lbs torque wrench from Harbor freight some day. That way I wont have rent one.

 

How do you know? Have you checked it's calibration?
The fact that it tightens fasteners and clicks when it reaches the setting doesn't mean it works fine.
The only way to know is to test it with a series of repeated loads and and see if it's consistently within spec.

As long as it's consistent, even if it's always off by a substantial amount, you can work around it. For instance, say you need 100lb-ft torque, but it has to be set to 120lb-ft but then is always +/- 2% of 100lb-ft, then you can live with that, and just set it to 120 when you really need 100.
Of course you'll perform tests to see what you need to actually set it to for various applications.

 

When I did my heads, I bought a Craftsman Beam style wrench from Sears. They're 24.99, and much more trustworthy than a HF clicker.

 

Lost of great input here. I checked online at sears and can pick one up there for a decent price and they are darn good at replacing broken tools for me up to this point. Just figured the HF prices were a little better.

 

Be aware that the Chraftsman warranty is only for 12 months on torque wrenches. I had to really push them to replace mine a few months ago under warranty. But when I bought mine originally it was lifetime and the copy of the online warranty exclusions didn't (as of several months ago) didn't exclude torque wrenches.