Am I the only one who was torquing flare nuts by feel for years until a leak check at a hangar in Wichita opened my eyes

Terry Wood · 2026-10-08T02:55:04.167379+00:00

I have been wrenching on GA airplanes for about 11 years now and I picked up a bad habit early on that I never caught. When I was doing fuel line work I would snug up the flare nuts until they felt right in my wrist and call it good. Nothing ever leaked on me so I figured my arm was calibrated fine. Then back in March I was finishing a wing root fuel line job on a 172 at a shop near Wichita and the lead handed me a small torque wrench with a crowfoot and told me to hit the spec in the manual. I humored him, set it to 40 inch pounds, and the wrench clicked way before I would have stopped turning by hand. I was probably over tightening every flare nut I ever touched, which squashes the flare and can crack the nut over time. Pulled out the manual on the next three jobs and sure enough there was a spec every single time. Now I keep that little wrench in my box and grab it without thinking. Does anyone have a good trick for getting a crowfoot on a tight flare nut without messing up the torque value from the offset?

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Am I the only one who was torquing flare nuts by feel for years until a leak check at a hangar in Wichita opened my eyes | Aircraft Mechanics - Talk Freely