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PSA: switched from torque wrench to hand snug on hydraulic lines and my leak rate dropped
Spent my first 6 years at the hangar in Tulsa torquing every B-nut to spec and still chased weeps on maybe 1 in 5 jobs. Last spring an old A&P showed me to snug by feel then check with a wrench after, and I have not had a return leak since. Anybody else make that switch or am I just lucky?
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amy_anderson9d ago
My old shop in Wichita had a sign on the wall that said "torque to spec, snug to sleep" and I laughed at it for years. I was the guy with the wrench in one hand and the spec sheet in the other every single time, and I still got weeps on maybe 1 in 6 fittings. What finally broke me of it was watching a guy with 30 years in snug a B nut on a fuel line, hand me the wrench after, and it clicked maybe an eighth of a turn. Not loose at all. That opened my eyes. The spec is a starting point, not gospel, because torque values assume clean dry threads and a lot of these fittings never see that. So yeah, I used to be all in on the wrench and now I snug by feel first every time. You're not lucky, you just learned what the old timers knew.
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