Gyrobob wrote on 02/21/13 at 07:32:18:Beam torque wrenches are considered clunky, old-school, imprecise, inconvenient, and not for REAL mechanics.
I disagree, somewhat.
One thing they do well is provide proper torque forever. Yes, they are not as slick as clickers, but clickers are notorious for going out of calibration.
I have an old (40 yrs maybe) Craftsman beam wrench I use most of the time. I have couple of clickers to use (they are faster) when the torque values aren't critical, and when the beam wrench is too long or hard to read in strange situations you get into with aircraft, etc.
agreed, I've had a no-name beam torque wrench since i got out of the military. I had it checked for calibration and though it was under torquing, it never over tightened.
if the indicator beam (pointer) ever lost zero, a simple bending of the bean back to zero put it right back in service. i have known many mechanics that go through clickers every year (oe less) due to calibration or breakage of the mechanism.
my beam is going strong for almost 20 years now after working on personal and friends autos and week end illegal street racing.
A point to remember when using torque wrenches. if you use an extention or size adapter3/8 to 1/2 inch or vice versa other than a socket or wrench type end... it changes the value of the reading by an unspecified amount less than what you are reading.