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Boss says use a torque wrench on stems, I say feel is fine, who's right here
Last Tuesday I was building up a customer's bike in the shop and went to snug down the stem bolts by feel like I always do, and my boss walked by and made me redo the whole thing with a torque wrench set to 5 Nm. He said he's seen three cracked carbon steerers this year from guys who trust their wrists too much, but honestly I've been doing it by hand for 11 years and never had a comeback or a crack. Now I'm second guessing myself every time I touch an alloy bar, wondering if I've just been lucky this whole time. The real question is whether the torque spec is actually the gospel or just a starting point, cause some of these cheap wrenches are off by 20 percent anyway. What do you all actually do on a rush job, trust the click or trust the wrist?
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phoenix21416d ago
The cracked carbon steerer thing is real, I watched a guy at our shop turn a $900 fork into confetti because his arm was calibrated wrong that day, and I say this as someone whose wrist calibration cost me a set of alloy stem bolts last month lol. Here's the deal though, torque specs on stems are usually pretty forgiving because most makers spec 5 to 6 Nm and the bolt won't snap till way past that, so the caveat is carbon, where the bar or steerer cracks long before the bolt does. You've been fine for 11 years because alloy gives you warning and you probably have decent feel, but feel doesn't tell you when you're at 4 Nm vs 7 Nm on a carbon faceplate. Cheap wrenches being off by 20 percent is a real problem but it's still better than being off by 50, and a $40 beam type wrench will never drift the way a clicker does. On a rush job I grab the torque wrench, and if I had to pick one place to be slow and careful it's anything touching carbon.
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