Torque Wrench - Dual Scale - 1/2" Drive - 250 ft/lb

Video Transcript for Detailed Breakdown of the Torque Wrench

Hi there do it yourselfer's. Today we're going to be taking a look at performance tools line of torque wrenches. Got our half inch as well as three H inch models here. And we're going to be giving you some scenarios that these are best used in. And this is what our torque wrenches looked like. They do come in their own hard cases, which is nice.

Cause when you're not using it you do want to store it inside the case. Cause if you we're to drop the wrench it can throw off the calibration. But this nice case here if you drop it while it's in the case, shouldn't affect it. The torque wrenches each have their readings in both foot pounds and newton meters. So if you're working on a metric or an SAE vehicle, you've got all the readings you'd need there.

It is lockable, if you look down here at the bottom, we can unlock it and lock it, which would allow us to twist it to unlock it. And then you can set it to your desired amount of torque. When you're not using it, you should run it all the way down. And that'll ensure that the spring inside is not under any tension, that's going to help keep it in calibration for a longer period. So you wanna make sure you do it when you're done in order to set the torque, you would turn it up.

And if we look at the numbers here, they have little lines. So our lines zigzags down and it comes to the center line here. That center line lines up with the numbers here. So we're going to go in and set it to the lowest setting on our half inch wrench, which is 25 pounds. We can see 25 there where the lines zigzags down and we're turning it until we reached the zero.

That means we're now at 25 where it lines up, plus zero pounds. If we needed to torque it to let's say 28 foot pounds, we would just go to where it says three. And now we're at 25 plus three, which puts it at 28. If you we're to continue spinning this until you hit zero again, you can see it's 15 is the number of increments that you have. And when we hit zero again, we're at the next number up. It does change from side to side. So that puts us at 40. And if we we're to do it a whole nother rotation that puts us 15 foot pounds higher. And mine ends up with 55. So you can see how this would work. It works exactly the same way on the three eight strive torque wrench but the numbers are going to be lower. On the half inch one here we can go between 25 and 250 foot pounds. And on our three eight torque wrench we can go between 10 and 100 foot pounds. Each one of these does have their own use. You can see here, the half inch one has a longer handle, which gives you more throw. So it's easier to tighten things down. So if you're doing something heavy, like putting your hitch on or torquing the lug nuts on your wheels, this half inch is going to be a great option. The three eights is for lighter duty applications, but you still want to make sure you've got all your bolts torqued properly. And this is really useful for things like small U bolts. Maybe if you're putting on a set of airbags they're really useful for that. And a lot of internal engine components, stuff like that. If you're torquing those, some of the lighter ones this is also really useful for that as well, if you'd like to tinker at home. So we'll go ahead and show you a use with the half inch torque wrench here by making sure that our bolts are torqued on our hitch. Because even though this one has been installed and the bolts we're torqued, it is recommended to periodically check the torque on your hitch to ensure that they're torqued properly. So we're gonna go ahead and do that now. It's another reason why you might want to have a torque wrench at home. So you could do that as well and make sure you're always safe when you go to travel out on your next destination. Now, when you're working on your hitch if you're going to take a wheel off for anything you would want to Jack your vehicle up and always want to make sure that you're using a Jack stand as well. Cause we don't want to just support our vehicle with hydraulics and trust that while we're working underneath. So we've gone ahead and lifted up some here. So that way we can get underneath to check those hitch bolts. And while we're just re-torquing ours it's going to be the same if you're installing a new hitch, you want to have all your bolts in place and tightened down. Then we'll torque them here at the end to make sure that they are appropriately tight. The top head here on the back does choose your direction. You can spin this. So you do want to make sure you're in the tightening direction. The sockets will just push on, there's no release button or anything on this one. I kind of prefer that I don't like the release button styles myself. I've already got the torque set to the specifications found in our instructions. So then we'll just slide our wrench up there and torque it down. And there's our click. So it looks like our bolt is still torqued here. We're just going to move on to the one on the other side. And then I have adjusted my torque wrench once again because not all the bolts on your hitch may have the same torque. Now your torque specs are generally found in the instructions for the component that you're putting on. But if there are no torque specs in there and you really want to make sure your bolts are torqued, you can find those online but make sure that you're using the torque spec that is for the thickness as well as the grade of bolt. Over here on this side it does look like it was a little bit loose. There we go, snugged it back up and we'll just repeat this for the remaining bolts. Another common use for your torque wrench is for your wheels. If you had a flat and you just swapped that out or you got a full-sized spare, whatever you're putting it on. It's also great for your trailer, if you're swapping out your trailer wheels. Make sure that your lug nuts are torqued. Whenever tightening down your lug nuts, you want to make sure you do it in a star pattern and that'll help ensure that it draws it up flat and flush up against the hub. You look at our handle here. It's kind of nice. It has a good grip on it. It's a rubber handle. It's big enough. And I like that it's rubber. Cause we can see here without any extensions on it. When we're torquing, now we are very close to the vehicle, there is enough gap there that we we're not hitting it with our socket on there, but if we did bump it, it's nice that it has a rubber casing to ensure that we don't cause any scratches. Adding extensions onto your torque wrench is fine. But when you do add extensions on it, it does slightly lower the output torque just a little bit. See if you want to keep that in mind. We're now over here on our truck. We're putting airbags in on this one. And our three eight wrench has come in really handy here because the straps where it holds onto the axle here these nuts needed a torque to 15 foot pounds. The half inch torque wrench we we're using earlier only goes down to 25 foot pounds. We wouldn't be able to get the appropriate torque with that one. But we're able to properly torque these because this one can go all the way down as low as 10 foot pounds. Additionally, when you're working in smaller, tighter areas sometimes half inch tools just don't quite fit. So you might want a three-eighths wrench that can more easily pass by. If we get a thicker socket on here we'd be contacting some stuff. So it's kind of nice if we're able to do this with these as well and get in there. So having a set of each at home really does maximize the versatility of your tool set. Both the half inch and the three eights ratchet are going to have 41 tooth rationing mechanisms in the head here. And that's going to determine the throw you're going to get with each click. If we look at it here, we can see each click how far the handle moves. And that just determines how easy you're going to be able to tighten down bolts in locations where it's extremely tight and you don't have a lot of room. So there's one click another, we'll just do a quick five clicks one, two, three, four, five. So that's kind of be throw range that you would have. The greater number of teeth that you have means you're going to have a better throw. You'll get more clicks in a small space. So at this one, if you're only getting four clicks with this one, if it had less teeth you might only get one or two clicks out of that one. And that means you're going to be tightening the bolt a less distance. You're doing a lot more arm work with a lot less output with less teeth in the head. And they are chrome-plated, which is going to keep it protected against rust and corrosion. And I do like that these are mechanical click style battery operated ones. They just tend to sit in the cabinet for a while. Your batteries go dead. And then when you finally need it, well darn it, it ain't going to make any noise for you. And it's not going to work. Click styles like this are just reliable. The spring is in there as long as you don't drop them, they do really last a long time and they stay calibrated very well. As long as you're making sure that once you've completed using your wrench before storing it a way, that you do screw it back down. And that completes our look at performance tools line of torque wrenches..