Re: How to calibrate your torque wrenches at home

[Peter]

Hey all,

This post is somewhat related to the above mentioned post, but I felt it should go in it’s own thread (since the original is more than 6 months old:

http://www.ericthecarguy.com/kunena/10-Repair-Central-The-How-To-Forum/48579-how-to-calibrate-your-own-torque-wrenches-at-home

With the help of a friend, I welded a fixture with which I can test my torque wrenches.

Since I currently do not have my own workbench, I’m using a few clamps to hold this fixture to my deck. I’m also using the same HF digital torque adapter that raistian77 used in his youtube video.

I’m mostly satisfied with the end result. The first wrench I tested (and kind of calibrated) was a Gearhead 3/8″ and 1/2″ combo torque wrench. The adjustment range on this wrench is from 20 ft/lbs to 150 ft/lbs. It read dead on 20 ft/lbs before calibration, but the middle range of the wrench low by around 10 ft/lbs. After spending a few minutes with it on my fixture, I was able to get it reading almost perfectly at 65 ft/lbs, but around 5 ft/lbs off at the extreme low end (20 ft/lbs).

I’m going to keep working on that one tomorrow when I get some more time, but I was able to at least verify that my 1/4″ HF wrench is still working perfectly (after being tossed around in my trunk for the last year or so). The torque adapter technically shouldn’t read correctly in the extreme low range (as per the packaging), all of the marks on my in/lb wrench read at the correct numbers on the adapter (so I assume it’s correct).

Has anyone else made a fixture like this to calibrate their own wrenches? I assume most pros send their wrenches out to get calibrated, but I’d think that a lot of DIY people do this (since most places won’t calibrate a HF or other non-name brand wrench).

Hope this is helpful to someone!

Attachments:

• torqueWrenchCalib.jpg

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