Just hit my 500th wheel torque check, and 37 of them were loose

I've been doing line maintenance at KDEN for about 4 years now. Today I hit 500 documented torque checks on main gear wheels. I was just flipping through my log (I keep a little notebook, old school I know) and counted that 37 of those were actually loose, meaning more than a quarter turn past spec. That surprised me because I always thought the torque stripe method was pretty reliable, but those were all cases where someone painted over a dirty surface or the stripe just blended in. My foreman always says 'trust the clicker, not the stripe.' Now I'm wondering, do you all count your own checks like this? And has anyone else seen a similar loose ratio, or am I working with a bad batch of hardware?

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mark_green2m ago

Damn, 37 out of 500 is way higher than I would've guessed too. I've been doing this for a decade now and I stopped trusting stripes a long time ago, especially on retreads or rims that have been painted over a few times. What I do is hit the clicker, then I mark the nut and the rim with a paint pen right after the check, like a fresh stripe that I put on, but I never use that as my pass/fail. The stripe is just for the next guy to see if something moved since my check, not for me to decide if it's tight. If you're seeing that many loose ones, I'd bet your torque wrenches are due for calibration or you're not getting the gun all the way seated before you pull the trigger. I'd also check if your team is using the same adapter every time, that can throw off your readings by a lot. Keep that notebook though, that's smart data to have when the higher ups ask why you're flagging so many.