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Stop telling new mechanics to torque stems by feel, I watched a bar slip on the W&OD trail
I keep hearing guys say you can just tighten a stem by feel once you have done a hundred of them, and I think that advice gets people hurt. Last month a rider came into the shop in Arlington with a face full of road rash after his bar rotated on a bumpy stretch of the W&OD trail, and the stem bolts were nowhere near 5 Nm. I checked my own clicker against the shop's calibrated one and it was reading about 1 Nm low, which is enough to matter on a carbon steerer. Buy a decent torque wrench and use it on every faceplate bolt, every time, especially on carbon. What torque specs are you all actually seeing on newer integrated cockpits, because the numbers seem to keep dropping?
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ivan8213d ago
I saw a GCN video where they tested a bunch of torque wrenches from cheap to pricey and even the mid range ones were off by 20 percent at the low end. That's the range we're all using on faceplates, so it makes sense why the "feel" guys are guessing wrong. Ordering a small beam style wrench for the 4 to 6 Nm stuff is honestly cheaper than a face repair.
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