My lead A&P said something about my torque wrench habits that got me thinking

Honestly, I've been torquing bolts the same way for 8 years. Last shift, my lead Frank watched me do a few fasteners on a Cessna 172 engine mount and said "you're over-cranking it, let the click stop you, not your arm." I always thought a click meant it was close enough. He showed me on a test stand how my technique was off by like 5 ft-lbs on average. Never had it pointed out before. Has anyone else had a basic thing they did for years that turned out to be wrong?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan_ellis1mo ago

First time I did a tire rotation on my own car I cross-threaded a lug nut so bad my dad had to cut it off with a torch, so yeah, I feel your pain on learning the hard way.

nancycooper1mo ago

@logan_ellis you actually cross-thread it, not cross-threaded it. Sorry, pet peeve.

wendysanchez29d ago

Cross-thread might be the verb form, but what Logan described was a completed action in the past. If you cross-threaded a nut yesterday, you didn't cross-thread it yesterday, you cross-threaded it. English works that way with past tense for a reason. Same as you would say "I baked a cake" not "I bake a cake" when talking about last week. And for the record, Logan's dad cutting off that lug nut with a torch is way more relatable than getting hung up on verb tense.