My Forbidden Druid came with a packable ratchet set that included 5 and 6 nm arms and all the major bits required to build the bike and perform most trail side maintenance. It would be pretty difficult to use for pivot or crank bolts as it’s very small, but for most small parts, it’s quite usable. I was pretty impressed with it, and I keep it in the truck now.
1 Like
I’m a “sometimes” on the torque wrench.
1 Like
I picked one of these up at cyclesmith a while back, probably not as nice as some of the other options listed above, however I found the price and small size appealing to keep in my pack.
2 Likes
Thanks everybody for your input.
I’ve always known that bolts should be torqued correctly I’ve just always taken a ‘tighten it until it feels tight enough’ approach and made sure I had the appropriate tools with me on my next ride. I have had to stop mid ride and tighten bolts from not tightening enough and I certainly have had a difficult time removing bolts likely due to over tightening.
Probably should have bought a torque wrench years ago. I have one on the way now.
1 Like
Bet all the Reps are capturing some valuable data right now.
1 Like
I’m a torque wrench zealot. I once overtorqued a seatpost clamp bolt and destroyed a Ritchey WCS carbon post on my xc bike, since then everything is torqued to spec. When I was a shop mechanic I would see a lot of damaged parts do to not using torque wrenchs, i.e., stripped bolts, cracked steerer tubes, excessive wear at interfaces, etc. My buddy had his crank arm fall off during a crit race when the non-drive side retaining bolt fell out. A good torque wrench is a great investment.
2 Likes
I had the same thing happen at MacRun once! Couldn’t figure out why my chain kept clicking and skipping (I thought it was the derailleur) until the crank arm fell off. Fortunately I found the bolt and kept going.
2 Likes
There are some places at McRun where loosing a crank would be very unfortunate.
3 Likes
100% of the time, but mostly cause I have a few sitting on the workbench. Otherwise I probably only would for carbon and go by feel for everything else.
1 Like
Goodpoint on the carbon!
Only mishap was with a Thomson stem. Now attached to a Ti XC hbar to keep a gate in the barn closed.
7 Likes
You must have really given her to crack that bad boy/girl!
Just a lot of riding over probably a decade or more.
Ok then you probably dinged it or fatigued it sufficiently. Eventually causing that crack to begin to propagate in that high tension area of the component. Neat.
1 Like