Bear with me guys....I'm brand new to being a subscriber/Supporter here. I bought my first Harley last June. A 2008 Street Bob. I am absolutely loving it and learning all about it mechanically. It's been cold and rainy here lately so I thought, "What better time to do some of the things I've been wanting to do to it?" Right? Well, I studied my factory Service Manual, read countless posts on these HD Forums and watched countless YouTube videos on changing out my Rocker Box gaskets. Upper and Lower. Im to the point now where I need to torque down my Rocker Housing bolts and the Service Manual says (In/Pounds). All I have are Ft/Pounds Torque Wrenches.
What is the best in/pounds torque wrench pound-rating to buy? Not brand but torque range.

 

25-250 in-lbs is what I use and it covers anything I’ve ever done.

Out of curiosity, how many in-lbs is the spec for the rocker support plate?

 

I'm sorry, called it the wrong thing. It's the Rocker Housing bolts and the manual says 120-168 in/pounds

 

How low does your smallest ft-lb torque wrench go accurately? You can just get one that goes up to that high with some overlap if you want. Then you'll be all set to handle anything. So if your smallest ft-lb torque wrench has a 10 to 150 range, you'll want your new one to go up to meet it at at least 120 in-lb (= 10 ft-lbs), so a 0-150 or a 20-200 would fit the bill just fine.

It looks like most of the fasteners in that area of the engine are torqued to the 50 to 150 in-lb range, a few go down to 25-40.

There are also ones for a much lower range, like a 5 to 80, not so sure you'd need one of those or not.

 

why not use your ft-lb wrench? 10-14 ft-lb

 

I'll have to check the range on mine. It may go that low.

 

Thank you for the info. Not much of a math guy here. Lol
I'll look to see if it goes that low. Wasn't 100% sure of the conversion.

 

As the others have said, you can divide the inch pounds by 12 to get foot pounds. If you have a harbor freight nearby they have a 1/4" drive torque wrench 20-200 inch pounds for $19 and a lot of times it is on sale for $9.99. They work pretty good and are fairly accurate when compared to others.

 

All torque wrenches whether foot or inch pounds are notoriously inaccurate at the lowest setting. Might also be inaccurate at the highest settings, although I do not know this for a fact. Inexpensive torque wrenches are, as you would expect, somewhat inaccurate. Consequently, since most torque specs give a range of torque for any given bolt, it is always best to torque to the lowest number within that range, especially for a bolt that has already been installed and removed for servicing.

I recently had one of my better but not expensive torque wrenches assessed by a local guy who does this for the auto service departments. It was low by five foot-pounds. Our home torque wrenches should never be trusted to be precisely accurate.

 

TRUE. If your standard torque wrench has not been calibrated or verified (most aren't) accuracy will be off. If it has been left loaded (especially at a higher setting) it will definitely be off on the low end. Invest in an Inch/lb wrench and carry on.

Only time my brother-in-law have ever had an issue is when he borrowed one of my torque wrenched and returned it LOADED. He's a machinist and knows better.