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I'd personally like to thank Embee for the great information and suggestions you are posting. As usual this group is a font of useful knowledge and help for those of us who are less able or mechanically inclined. In all honesty it is very likely that I will not actually put any of it into practice right now though. This is due to my laziness and reluctance to have to work on the bike in the freeing cold. no heating in my garage and as it is a stand alone building it is always very cold in winter. For me, at the moment this is a minor annoyance only so will probably wait till better

I think a lot of you miss the point when talking about torque wrench use, even if a wrench is 10% out it can still be a lot safer than a ham fisted home mechanic guessing the tightness of the important bolts, and as for things with 2 or more fasteners as in brake calipers, its far safer to have both bolts at the same tension, as one tighter than the other can cause the other to drop out! Sure get them calibrated, I have mine checked, but don't panic if they are slightly out.

I once ran a trial of workshop torque wrench (the one they used for getting nuts out from under the bench, proping the door open in summer etc.) against feel and an air gun. A 16 year old apprentice handed a standard length ring spanner and told not to strip any threads did as well as the wrench on basic tapped aluminium casting to plate joints using 8.8 bolts. Gasket joints are different, but easy to spot as they will be a pattern torque and second re-torque at a higher setting. The air gun with the regulator set to 11and used until the tank was empty was of course a joke. Andy

Torque wrenches are a perennial discussion point. Coming from industry where fasteners are a major issue I'm pretty well versed in the business. As far as I'm aware the standard for general use industrial quality wrenches is +/-3% or thereabouts. I have a couple which are of this standard, and when checked they come in pretty much within that. I've checked a couple of cheap and cheerful wrenches (Sealey/Draper type) against mine, admittedly not quite calibration lab methods but reasonable, and they've been a lot better than I suspected, well within 10% and generally no worse than 5

Yes that's wise, in fact don't use any ratchet to undo things it only wears them out quicker, use a breaker bar (long handled) on things like wheel nuts, it saves hurting yourself.

hi robin, to stop the end plate from being loose,when tightening the axle nut , place your spanner or socket on the nut with the handle pointing up and push away from rear of bike to tighten it, if you do it with the handle hanging down and pull from rear of bike you pull the axle back slightlly causing the end plate to be loose and pulling the wheel out of line slightly. al.

The way I do it is to retain some tension in the axle nut. Loose enough that it slides as you tighten the adjuster but not enough for things to slop about. Seems to work for me.