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My torque wrench stat discovery stunned me during a tune up on Saturday
I was working on a customer's vintage touring bike at my home stand in Portland last weekend. I decided to look up how often people actually overtighten their stem bolts. Found a stat from a Park Tool blog that said nearly 40 percent of bikes brought in for creaking noises have stem bolts torqued way past spec. That number surprised me because I always thought it was more like 10 or 15 percent. The article said overtightening can crack the steerer tube or strip the bolt threads over time. I checked my own bike's stem bolts and sure enough they were at 8 Nm instead of the recommended 5 Nm. Has anyone else run into this stat or seen it play out in their own work?
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nora101mo ago
Oh man, I once stripped a bolt on my beater bike using a cheap beam style torque wrench that was totally off.
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lewis.diana1mo ago
Get a good beam style torque wrench and test it against a digital one every few months. Cheap ones drift fast and you'll end up chasing problems you created yourself. That 40 percent stat makes sense when you think about how many people just crank bolts down until they feel tight.
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