Can you teach me more about lug bolts & related tire tools?

Yep, standard 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 square drives which can be used with both imperial and metric hex/12 point sockets.

You can place you hands on any part of a click type torque wrench to get it to work correctly.

No, the end of the torque wrench would move exactly the same distance. The end of the extension would move by twice the distance as the end of the torque wrench.

That's strange that Europeans use a half-metric half-what-you-call-Imperial standard of units.

To us, Imperial is a strange word, where it often means Imperial Japan or Imperial British (meaning before WWII in our vernacular), but we never use the word "imperial" in terms of measurement units (at least I don't).

I have seen "imperial gallons" where I have to ask what they are, since we just have gallons and liters and nothing else (similarly with regular tons and long tons I guess).

I guess, since the US is anything but imperial, that the term must be so old as to predate the SAE, and to relate to Imperial British units?

I thought all torque wrenches needed your hand in a certain given spot?

OK. I'm confused because I have a dial-type wrench which has a pin which certainly is to prevent you from putting force at any other point for this reason alone....

If my car's service warning light comes on, I remove the bulb. If the car makes a smell, a noise, or fails to run properly, THEN I get it serviced.

Really, you seriously need to get a life.

[snip boring s**te]

They measure torque at the head of the wrench, not the end of the handle. Take a wrench with a 2 foot handle. Say it takes 50 pounds of force at the end of the handle to loosen a nut. Take a wrench with a 4 foot handle. It will take 25 pounds of force at the end of the that one's handle to loosen the same nut. That's why cheater pipes work.

Classic beam scale torque wrenches do indeed rely on a single point load which is why the handle has a pivot pin. Your comments are correct for click wrenches.

Not necessarily the rest of Europe but the UK.

I'm now retired and during my schooling it was mainly the metric system that was taught.

In the UK we still use a imperial units for some items. Beer in pubs is sold in pints and not litres. Vehicle speed and road signs are still in miles and not kilometres. Manufactures/dealers still refer to petrol consumption in miles per gallon even though petrol has been sold by the litre for 3 decades or more.

I was an engineer by profession and only used metric my whole working life for the job.

Some non-metric items are throwback to history - they have been that way for hundreds of years and haven't changed.

We only say gallons BUT when talking to the ex-colonies we have to say 'Imperial' because your pints and gallons are different from ours.

1 imperial (UK) pint = 1.2 US pint 1 imperial (UK) gallon = 1.2 US gallons

There is also the tonne = 1,000 kg

I don't get the why if this is what you mean by beam scale torque wrench. or

Oh crap. Is this myth still floating around? We're not measuring *movement*, we're measuring *torque*. Place a 100 pound weight on one end of a 5-foot long teeter-totter. How much weight do you add to the other end to balance it? Place a 100 pound weight on one end of a mile long teeter-totter. Same question. (PS: You'll get the same answer)

Back to the actual question:

3-inch extension keeps you close to the nut, unlikely to twist sideways and fall off. 16-inch extension has the possibility of pulling the socket out of alignment, maybe rounding off the nut, and scraping your knuckles (and your shiny new wrench) on the ground, UNLESS you properly support the wrench at the head end to keep it straight.

Yep that's the style. Scale reading assumes the load is at the handle pivot pin.

I show both types of torque wrenches in my original post, reproduced below.

The "beam style" (with the black handle & red pointer) has a "pivot pin" to ensure that your force is applied at a single point of contact on the bar.

Do the Germans and French also use "inch" sizes for their ratchets?

I see. Like you, we only speak of "gallons", where we don't ever need to distinguish between your gallons and our gallons, I guess. :)

I believe it's an international standard with no metric equivalents for the "drive" side of sockets.

Wot - no Range Rovers? Jaguars? Nissans?

If you have a spare jack, place it under the extension bar to reduce sideways load on the socket. You can then use your full body weight on the breaker bar with less chance of breaking the tools.

Shucks. I forgot. I actually know someone who has a Range Rover. There was a Jag convertible around for awhile but I haven't seen it for years. Nissans are Japanese, Mexican, or American made at least for the North American market.

That's because 12 point sockets are not the best to use on an impact

- as discussed previously.

And yes, they ARE fatter - because they REALLY need to be.

Or Korea if it wears a bow-tie.

I think the only time I ever saw that was on the fuel pump bolts on a '67 Pontiac. I wondered why there of all places.