A frame builder told me my torque wrench habit was slowing me down

I was at a shop meetup in Denver last Saturday and this old timer who builds custom frames watched me torque every single bolt on a customers bike, then said I was wasting time and chasing numbers that dont matter on stuff like stem faces and derailleur clamps. He argued that feel and consistency beat a click type wrench on small aluminum bolts, and honestly it made me rethink how Ive been running my repair bench for the last 6 months. Has anyone else switched away from torquing every fastener, and if so where do you draw the line between safety and speed?

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the_margaret26d ago

My buddy Dave ran a shop in Fort Collins for years and he went through this exact same thing back in 2019. He got so paranoid about carbon parts that he started torquing literally everything, even bottle cage bolts, and his tune-ups went from 45 minutes to almost two hours. Then he stripped a stem bolt at 5nm because his cheap wrench was out of spec and the click never came, which is the funny part. He ended up going back to feel on small stuff like derailleur clamps and chainring bolts, but still uses the wrench on anything carbon or anything holding a wheel on. The line he draws is basically, if it fails and you crash, torque it, if it just rattles loose, use your hands.

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