Worried About Under- or Over-Tightening Your Nuts and Bolts?

At Abolox® Tools, we know that you have a job to do, and that you take pride in doing that job well. Whether you’re a mechanic, a machinist, or you work in a fabrication shop, your days are filled with loosening and tightening nuts and bolts. Hopefully you have the right torque wrenches for each job, and those wrenches are properly calibrated for each type of nut and bolt. If you need new wrenches, heads, or testing systems, then we can provide everything you need.

With every nut and bolt that you use, it’s imperative to make sure that you don’t under- or over-tighten it. A well-calibrated torque tool will save you from this trouble, but if you’re still using standard wrenches, then there could be the risk of a nut or bolt that is too loose or too tight. In this post, we’ll look at what can happen when a fastener isn’t properly tightened to the appropriate torque value.

Many people, when working on a car or piece of machinery, simply tighten down a fastener until it doesn’t come loose. While this can work for certain things, there are assigned torque values to different types of nuts and bolts. The length of the bolt, the size of the nut, and anything the fastener is holding down, such as a gasket or a clamp, all play a part in how tight the fastener should be. If you over-tighten to the point where the gasket is too compressed or the clamp is bending, then you could be risking a break or malfunction in the future.

With the right torque wrench, you can tighten the fastener to the appropriate level, given that your wrench has been calibrated to the appropriate settings. You’ll likely need a torque tool for each application, and it’s good to do your research on which wrenches are needed for which jobs.

When using hand wrenches and other manual tools, you might be worried about over-tightening the nut or bolt, and therefore you don’t apply enough torque. This results in a fastener that could come loose as the car is driving down the road or while a certain piece of machinery is running. A lug nut that comes off of a wheel can be catastrophic to a driver and their car, which is why certified mechanics use well-calibrated torque wrenches.

Being too cautious and under-tightening when adding fasteners to an engine or another machine can cause the same risks as over-tightening — serious malfunctions and the possibility of injury. While this can be avoided by using the right torque tool, if that tool isn’t calibrated on a regular basis, you could end up under-tightening a faster, but believe that everything is fine.

At Abolox, we want to make sure that you feel confident about every nut and bolt that you tighten. With our selection of wrenches and other torque accessories, you can have the right tool for every job, along with the testing and calibration systems that keep your tools in good working order.