Chatted with a framebuilder at a swap meet who said most of us overtorque stem bolts by 50%

He was an old school guy from Colorado who builds with 4130 and said he just uses a 4mm hex with light wrist pressure. Has anyone else actually tested their torque wrench on stem bolts and seen how off it is?

2 comments

2 Comments

mary_schmidt13d ago

Totally feel you on this one lol. I stripped a stem bolt on my old commuter a few years back because I thought "more tight = more safe" and it was a huge pain to fix. Ever since then I just go with a light snug by hand plus maybe a quarter turn, no torque wrench needed. That old framebuilder sounds like he knows his stuff, seems way too easy to overtighten with those little bolts.

samw4713d ago

I get what you're saying @mary_schmidt, but I've gotta push back a little on the hand snug plus quarter turn method. I think that's how I ended up with my handlebars slipping on a wet ride last year, because I didn't have enough torque on those bolts. The old framebuilder may know his stuff for vintage steel, but modern carbon bars and alloy stems need specific torque to stay put without cracking, and you can't eyeball that. I stripped bolts before too, but that was from using cheap allen keys at bad angles, not from proper torque. A beam style torque wrench is like 20 bucks and saves way more hassle than guessing.