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Warning: A night shift at JFK made me ditch my old torque wrench routine
We had a 737 with a string of wheel bearing issues, and my crew chief saw me using my old click-type wrench on a main gear nut. He pulled me aside and said 'You're trusting a tool you haven't calibrated since last year on a part that lands the plane.' I swapped to his digital wrench and the reading was off by 15 foot-pounds. How often do you guys actually send your daily drivers out for calibration?
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pauljones1mo ago
Honestly that 15 foot pound difference is probably fine for a main gear nut. Those things are torqued to like 300 foot pounds minimum. A 5% error on something with that much safety margin gets blown out of proportion. My shop sends wrenches out every two years like the manual says and we've never had a problem. People act like a tool is junk the second it leaves the cal lab.
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lily_schmidt531mo ago
My buddy learned the hard way that a 5% error matters, even with big numbers like pauljones mentioned.
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