Seems I too learned a reasonable amount of force to apply to a spanner in my yoof.
Starting off with bicycle nuts and bolts was not good training as it seems back then the materials used were much stronger than steel into alloy as were the fixings on my m/cycles.
As Richard stated, a few stripped threads and you soon learned that spanners were usually sized relative to the approximate average force requiring to be applied to the fixing, but as ever the materials involved had to be taken into account....
Never had a torque wrench in my early tool kit, and fixings seemed to do their task without regular attention. Even today while I do have a couple of torque wrenches I have not ever found the need to use them on on my old Morgan, and yes fixings do come loose on it from time to time...
Perhaps that my old Trad`s design and construction may be along similar lines to that of a Shackleton, which was described by an engineer as being so many thousand rivets flying in loose formation, such is the flex in my Morgan that if on a rare occasion I might be inclined to give it a bit of stick over other than the smoothest of roads, after so doing it seems reasonable to run over it with a spanner when one is underneath with the grease gun...?
Perhaps more modern Morgans of all types are far more sophisticated beasts requiring more use of a torque wrench in all sorts of areas...?
