That $30 Harbor Freight torque wrench beat my Snap-on on head bolts

Everyone on here says never trust the $30 Harbor Freight torque wrenches, so I bought one to compare against my Snap-on for head bolts on an old Civic. Did 20 clicks at 40 ft-lbs and the cheap one clicked within a few lbs on my beam gauge every time. The Snap-on was off by over 7 ft-lbs at the same setting, which blew my mind since it cost 8x more. Maybe the beam gauge is the real hero here, or I got a lucky one out of the bin. Has anyone else had a budget tool beat a name brand on actual measurements, or did I just get a unicorn?

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clairec782d ago

Whoa, that's wild. I had a similar thing happen with a $15 digital caliper from Amazon. It read within a thousandth of my Mitutoyo, which cost me like 150 bucks. I was mad about it for a week, ngl. Kept the cheap one in my garage and the expensive one got demoted to the drawer.