That moment a torque wrench let me down on a 737 flap actuator

I was at the hangar in Oklahoma City last Tuesday, torquing down a flap actuator bolt on a 737. The wrench clicked at 50 inch-pounds, but the bolt still felt loose, so I checked with a digital gauge and found it was reading 20 low. Spent two hours tracking down a third wrench from stores across the ramp, then had to redo all six bolts because the first one was wrong. Has anyone else had a certified tool let them slip like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

carter.laura1mo agoMost Upvoted

Hmm, I gotta push back a little on the "certified tool let me slip" part. A torque wrench is a precision instrument, not a magic wand. If it's been dropped, banged around, or not calibrated in the last year, that "certified" sticker doesn't mean much. The real slip was trusting the click without testing it first, not the tool itself. You spent two hours tracking down a replacement, but a quick check against a known reference at the start would have saved all that time. Tools fail, but the responsibility to verify them is always on us.

felix_williams7127d ago

Wait, are you really telling me a "known reference" is something most guys have just laying around their garage? I get your point about the tool being possible bad, but a lot of us are just DIYers with a couple wrenches, not a full calibration lab.