Vent: That time a torque wrench lied to me on a Subaru in Portland

Was doing a head gasket job on a 2011 Outback last month, torqued the head bolts to spec, or so I thought. Found out the hard way when I fired it up and got that sweet antifreeze mist out the exhaust, coolant all over the shop floor. Turns out my torque wrench was 15 ft-lbs off, hadn't calibrated it in like 4 years. I had to pull the whole head back off, resurface it again, and redo everything with a borrowed snap-on wrench. Cost me an extra day and a 60 dollar gasket set, not to mention the embarrassment of telling the customer it'd be two days instead of one. Anyone else ever had a trusty tool just go silent bad on them, and how do you even catch that before it bites you?

1 comments

1 Comment

betty_perry241d ago

Bought a used impact gun that stripped every lug nut on my truck before I realized it was bad.