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Spent 2 years torquing my carbon bars wrong without realizing it
I was in a shop in Portland last month helping a buddy work on his bike and the mechanic there grabbed my bike to adjust the stem. He noticed my torque wrench was clicking way before the bolts felt tight and showed me I'd been using the wrong setting this whole time. I had it on inch-pounds instead of newton-meters so I was way under-torquing everything. Has anyone else made a unit conversion mistake that messed up their riding?
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kevin_carr17h ago
Hang on, I gotta push back a little here. I mean, yeah, that's a bummer of a mix-up and definitely something to sort out, but "messed up your riding" feels like a stretch unless you were landing 10-foot drops every day. On my gravel bike, I've run bolts way loose on purpose for years because I was scared of stripping them out. The thing is, a lot of us overthink torque wrenches in the first place. Honestly, if you're not racing or riding crazy tech, hand tight with a little dab of Loctite has kept my bars and stem from creaking or moving for thousands of miles. How much actual slipping or rattling did you notice before the shop guy caught it?
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