electronic? brand? range? i know zip
Use?
I do most of my own auto maintenance, and I am fanatical about torques. My pet peeve is "technicians" who use air guns to tighten wheel lug nuts, overdo it and don't get them even, and two days later the brake rotors are warped. So I carry a torque wrench in every one of our vehicles, along with a 3/4" x 13/16" reversible lug nut socket and short extension. I use that for rotating tires, and carry one in each Jeep in case of a flat.
I buy the house brand wrenches at Auto Zone. Automobiles aren't as critical as space shuttles, so if the wrench is off by 2% or 3%, it doesn't matter. It's much more important that every bolt or nut in a set (be it lug nuts, headbolts, or whatever) get torqued to the same value as every other nut or bolt in the set.
I have one beam-type torque wrench from my teens, and a second that I inherited from my grandfather. I haven't used either one in many years (although those were all I had when I was racing and built my own engines, and I never blew one up). They're great -- if you can align your eyeballs with the scale to read it. Doing a head gasket on an in-line 6-cylinder engine in the car makes that a bit difficult. Which is what makes the click-release type wrenches so great. Dial in the torque you want, pull until it clicks, and you're there.
I've never tried an electronic torque wrench, but I did try a digital electronic caliper. Hated it. It's faster (for me) to read a traditional dial caliper with a round, analog dial than to read a digital ... and the thing ate batteries. Dial calipers and click-release torque wrenches don't need batteries.
All mine go to 150 foot-pounds, except for the small one in inch pounds for transmission work. The only think I can't do with the 150-pounders is axle setup -- axles on Jeeps typically need 175 to 200 foot-pounds, so for when I need that I borrow from my friend, the professional mechanic.
