Makes my head hurt

[37chief]

All my tractors are made in the US, and use American made tools to do repairs. Then along comes my mf 231, made in Poland, It wasn't too bad tool wise. In the 60's I got a BSA motorcyee made in England. It needed a completely different set of tools, called Whitworth. If one wrench didn't fit just look for a different size, dont bother looking at the size mark on the wrench. Now my Japanese motorcycles come along starting in the 60's. A another set of wrenches are needed, called Metric. Then I find out my cars are now a mixture of Metric and US. Metric aren't too bad if a 14 mm is too small just count the next number up which is 15mm, and 10 mm wrench fits just about all small nuts, and bolts. A big problem for me is the nut and bolt thread size. I will never figure that out. Stan

 

[NDIHC]

I haven't seen a car with a mixture of SAE and metric built since the 80s.

 

[Richard G.]

M

.

 

[Richard G.]

My wife's 2004 Grand Cherokee and my 99 Dodge Ram diesel have both on them.
Very frustrating.

 

[rrlund]

My David Brown Olivers have Whitworth. I use standard wrenches on them. Sometimes they're a little tight, but they always go on and off.

 

[Ray,IN]

Then you come to one that's 13mm, Hummm, not in the set and nothing else fits, not SAE, not Whitworth. ArrrG.

 

[drsportster]

I have a metric tap & die set to compare sizes and pitches to

 

[NDIHC]

Then you come to one that's 13mm, Hummm, not in the set and nothing else fits, not SAE, not Whitworth. ArrrG.

I hate sets that skip sizes. US cars usually use 5.5, 7, 10, 13, 15 and 18mm. Asian usually 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 17 and 19. But I've seen some Asians that use 15, 16 and 18 too, especially Nissan. European cars can be all over the place too with their sizes. As far as a mixture of SAE and metric, I think the only SAE on my 90 GMC were internal engine parts. Body and anything external to the engine were metric, maybe with rare exceptions. My dad's 85 C10 was a mixture of both. I probably didn't work on many Chrysler light trucks or Jeeps back in the day. I worked on a lot of the K cars and the ones that came after them and don't remember them having any SAE bolts. But that was a long time ago so I could be forgetting some!

 

[Stan Coryell]

I haven't seen a car with a mixture of SAE and metric built since the 80s.

The 8.8" Dana Rear Differential Cover uses 5/16"-18 bolts with a 1/2" head on my 2011 F150.

 

[NDIHC]

The 8.8" Dana Rear Differential Cover uses 5/16"-18 bolts with a 1/2" head on my 2011 F150.

That is true. The differentials in a lot of cars used that size bolt on the covers. Even cars that had every other bolt metric often had SAE differential fasteners.

 

[wh]

Have a 1993 Chevy Silverado. Been a few times that I needed safe and metric wrenches to work on it.

 

[Wdj]

On a Perkins out of a Timberjack forwarder either the flywheel or the flex plate bolt circle, don't remember which, we found some were metric, some SAE. Didn't notice taking it apart, took awhile to figure it out going back together. Guess somebody must've stripped some of them and coiled them at some time.

 

[miangus]

I haven't seen a car with a mixture of SAE and metric built since the 80s.

I just loved the small block Chevrolets which had the SAE threads with a metric head. When rebuilding, I would get a inexpensive bolt kit from Dorman.

 

[Eman85]

If the bolt has numbers on the head it's metric, that's the bolt strength. Buy a thread pitch gauge, makes it fast and simple to identify what you have.

 

[Stan Coryell]

I have a Massey Ferguson 202 Tractor, similar to a 35 or 135. It has a Continental Z134 gas engine. The oil pan drain threads had a burr making the plug tight going in an out. After a bunch of measuring I figured out that it's an M18 - 1.5 thread. Why the oddball? Well you guessed it, that's a common spark plug thread. I had one of those re-threading tools, but I couldn't find it. I bought another and the old one showed up a few days later, right where I left it the previous decade.

Reliving that makes my head hurt...

 

[stoughtonfarmboy]

Then you come to one that's 13mm, Hummm, not in the set and nothing else fits, not SAE, not Whitworth. ArrrG.

Get a KTM motorcycle. Buy a 13mm wrench to fit several nuts and bolts on that motorcycle. Problem solved.

Ken

 

[SadFarmall]

Whitworth confuses many people. The size on the spanner/wrench refers to the diameter of the bolt shank, not the distance across the flats of a nut or bolt head. This was an engineer's system to develop standard size nuts for a given standard of steel. Sometimes the spanners are stamped BSW for British Standard Whitworth or just British Standard.
If you own an Australian-built Farmall, you will need Whitworth tools.
Also, BSW thread is at 55⁰ not 60⁰.
SadFarmall

 

[Charles in Aus.]

Harry Ferguson had a vision for his TE20 . The Ferguson spanner fits almost every fastener on the tractor. It was originally a Whitworth size then changed to the AF size range , made that way for the foray into the American market .