I've used a Harbor Freight torque wrench for years. Is it the best heck no but mostly it's just for lug nuts, caliper brackets, and calibers. I did use it a few years back to rebuild an engine. Put many miles on that engine since then without issue.

quote:

Originally posted by ShouldBFishin:
I can't speak to the Kobalt torque wrench, but I recently purchased the equivalent Husky torque wrench from Home Depot and like it so far. There is a difference on the warranty - the Husky has a lifetime no questions asked, Kobalt has a 1 year limited guarantee.

I have the same Husky, and I agree.

I probably could have gone with the Kobalt or Husky and been happy had their low-ends not been a mere 10 ft-lbs shy of the 60 ft-lbs I need to torque my mower blades.

"Torque the mower blades?!?!" I can hear some asking.

Yup. They're fitted with hubs that have sheer pins. The drive stud nut torque is calculated such that, if the blades strike anything too immovable, the friction will be overcome, the sheer pins will sheer and the drive train will be saved. (That's the claim, anyway.)

The reason for the 100 ft-lb requirement is putting wheels back on a boat trailer.

Whomever did it previously obviously used the "tighten as hard as I can with a breaker bar" or "impact wrench running wild" method of lug-nut tightening. There was already one lug snapped off when we bought the boat and trailer. When I went to change the tires a couple weeks ago another snapped off and I couldn't even budge the first three I tried on the other wheel. So hubs and all came off and I took it all in to a trailer place to have it all straightened-out.

Now I need to put the wheels back on. I don't want whomever buys this from us to be cursing me like I've been cursing the twit who over-tightened them last time.

I didn't explain all this in my OP because I didn't want people to have to wade through an entire novella to get to my question

As an aside: Just for S&Gs I threw a socket on my trusty old Sears Craftsman split-beam torque wrench and torqued the two wrenches against each other at 20 and 40 ft-lbs. They agreed with one another near as I could tell