I am looking for a solution to torquing inward facing bolts on the shock yoke of a Canyon Lux Trail. The faces of the bolt are ~43mm apart. Neither of my 3/8 toque wrenches will fit between them with a hex bit attached. Does anyone know of a 1/4 torque wrench that will fit in this space with a 6mm bit attached?
I can’t imagine the torque spec is that high, would a ball Allen make the job easier?
I have an older Snap-on 1/4" drive torque wrench that will do it with the shorter 1/4" drive hex sockets I have. The new Snap-on torque wrenches are different but have the same head thickness, stated as 7/16" , but are very expensive ($420). I imagine there are similar but much cheaper torque wrenches out there. On thing that might help and that I’ve done in the past is cut down the length of the hex part of a 1/4" drive socket to make it shorter and fit into a tight space. This can be done with an abrasive cutoff wheel in a Dremel tool.
There are other ways that this can be tackled, but they get a bit trickier. One is to do kind of a long “crow’s foot” thing, or use a fish scale and normal 90 deg hex wrench. I’ve done things like this in other situations.
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Yeah, I thought about the extension and calculating the additional leverage.
More likely, I would like to get a quality (though not snap on prices!) 1/4 drive to travel with. Currently, I just keep a Park ADT with present torques in my travel kit. I was hoping someone with a Feedback Sports. Park, or Wera or similar priced tool could confirm some dimensions.
At my shop on a saturday so I can’t spend too much time on bike shenanigans, but here is a SO 1/4 torque wrench with 6mm socket that you could put a cut off piece of 6mm allen into and clear 43mm for sure. Sorry can’t find my calipers so metric tape measure it is.
The head of the ratchet is around 11mm which matches the 7/16 spec above, this one is 20+ years old don’t think they have changed the head in ages. Should be able to find a cheaper version that will fit.
Then you can find a set like this that will be even shorter than doing the 6mm allen piece in a 6mm socket. This is just an example these are 3/8 drive but 1/4 drive versions exist.
with a SO shorty 6mm it would JUST clear so those sunnex (in 1/4 drive) should definitely work.
BUT small torque wrenches, no matter how much you spend, are highly inaccurate. Precise? usually but they go out of calibration by the time you put them back in the case from being calibrated. 25+ years in the business (auto repair) and my 1/4 is the only torque wrench I have that has ever had to be recalibrated. It’s used 99% of the time where even is more important than the actual value, like a plastic valve cover with 20 fasteners. You want it as even as possible across it it being 7 vs 9nm when spec is 8 isn’t important, they just need to be all 7 or all 9. Bike parts the value is important more than them all being even since it is just 1 or 2 fasteners on a part in most cases. This makes actually getting them torqued very difficult. Point being the tool won’t do what you need so don’t stress it too much.
Wera/park ones are probably 2-3mm thicker than the SO.
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Wow, thanks for the detailed response!