Aldi torque wrench

kentphil

anyone else seen this? wonder how good it is?
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/sp ... _26856.htm

Focus-rider

take care. Coming from a motorbike background ive found there is a huge difference in torque wrenches. The cheaper they are the worse they are and usually not even remotely calibrated or will loose accuracy very quickly. Always remember to wind you torque wrench back to 0 when finished with it. In my opinion £40 usually starts to get you a half decent wrench. Also check to see if its in Nm or Lbs per foot, most specs are in Nm so you end up having to convert what your wrench is in to Nm. Bit of pain.
P.s that looks like a bloody long wrench, if its for doing small jobs like bars and stems you may want something smaller. larger wrenches quite often wont measure below a certain Nm where as smaller ones will and are usually more accurate. Try and maybe buy two, large for cranks and small for fiddly stuff. There are plenty on ebay.
good luck.

ugo.santalucia

Focus-rider wrote:

take care. Coming from a motorbike background ive found there is a huge difference in torque wrenches. The cheaper they are the worse they are and usually not even remotely calibrated or will loose accuracy very quickly. Always remember to wind you torque wrench back to 0 when finished with it. In my opinion £40 usually starts to get you a half decent wrench. Also check to see if its in Nm or Lbs per foot, most specs are in Nm so you end up having to convert what your wrench is in to Nm. Bit of pain.
P.s that looks like a bloody long wrench, if its for doing small jobs like bars and stems you may want something smaller. larger wrenches quite often wont measure below a certain Nm where as smaller ones will and are usually more accurate. Try and maybe buy two, large for cranks and small for fiddly stuff. There are plenty on ebay.
good luck.

+1

k-dog

That looks like mine - but mine was £40.

It won't do small things. I got mine for the car and the only thing I use it for on my bike is the bb and cassette lockring. Useful though.

andy_wrx

It'll be intended for car usage, so it'll have a minimum setting which is far higher than what you need on a bike and you won't be able to use it on seatpost, bars, etc

rolf_f

I have a Lidl equivalent (which is actually really pretty good quality and German made). For bikes its use will be bottom brackets and cassettes as already said. I use mine very frequently for the latter and it has stopped me over-tightening the cassette (which I did once hard enough to mess up the cassette tool trying to get the thing off). Mine is scaled in Nm but there is no calibration certificate - that's not really that important though; these things enable you to achieve consistency. You don't need absolutes unless you are starting from scratch.

For £15 or so it's handy to have but no substitute for a small BBB or similar which is what you need for 90% of bike tasks.

father_jack

use something similar for BB & cassette. Problem is for BB one side the torque thing doesn't function for left tigthen. Lowest torque setting for mine I think is 20nm.

My other torque wrench doesn't go high enough for BB. So it comes in handy. Plus it's longer arm so get more control. Once you get a idea of the torque needed need to use a manual wrench on the other side.

ugo.santalucia

A torque wrench is supposed to be a precision tool... a cheap precision tool is what is called an oxymoron. I would rather try to save money by getting a used one from an aquaintance or known source than getting something which cannot be trusted to do what it is supposed to do

JamesB

It`s a bit like buying a cheap Torqkey set, after breaking several and damaging teh torq bolts heads I realised why a single quality torq key bit cost considerable more than a set of ten---and was able top sort out damaged bolt heads for once and all.