No metric wrenches?

notjustair · Mar 8, 2015

Twice in the last six months this has happened. It shocked me both times.

I bought an aftermarket fuel pump at Napa to replace the mechanical one on my chore pickup. It wasn't cheap but I was glad to see it was made right here in US of A. When I started putting it on ALL of the fasteners were SAE sizes. What in the world? I haven't used those wrenches on a "modern" vehicle since my 1986 Ford school bus days. It must have been the middle of the change - it was half and half.

Anyone else run into fasteners on new things that used a 1/2 inch or 9/16 wrench?

dr sportster · Mar 8, 2015

13 mm is almost 1/2 inch and 14 mm is about 9/16s inch . Maybe your British Standard just happened to fit.

rrlund · Mar 8, 2015

I overhauled a diesel engine in a Deere 1010 crawler for my brother one time and some of the bolts in that were metric.
When I went to pull the engine out of my White 2-135 and tried to mount a lifting plate to the back of the head,those holes were metric. I had done an inframe overhaul on it and they were all standard. These holes didn't have anything in them,but I had to go to town and get some metric bolts to mount the plate.

Texasmark1 · Mar 8, 2015

Yeah, it's mix and match today. You have a metric built piece of equipment, get out your metric wrenches and lo and behold you come across some SAE fasteners and vise versa.

Oh well.

Mark

Wheatfarmer · Mar 8, 2015

Bought several gate latches all out of the same bin. Some Metric some SAE.

JD Seller · Mar 8, 2015

To my knowledge there is not a metric PIPE thread. Maybe there is but I have never seen it on anything.

Also your pump might fit things clear back to when they were all SAE sizes.

ss55 · Mar 8, 2015

Were the threads English or metric?

Sometimes an English wrench fits a metric bolt, especially if the bolt head is used and rounded over.

M5x0.8 and NF10-32 are the only threads that I have found that will work in each others tapped hole.

DeltaRed · Mar 8, 2015

'British Standard parallel pipe thread'. Is that "metric"?We used to 'argue' with that on British equipment when I worked in the diesel shop. Steve

John in Nebraska · Mar 8, 2015

On 80s and 90s engines, cast iron engines that were designed before metrics, like the small block Chevys and Fords I have found this. If the bolt goes into the engine or heads it is standard, if it goes to an accessory mount, it is metric. At least they are clearly stamped differently on the head of the bolt.

Steve in VA · Mar 8, 2015

Old series III Land Rovers were a mix of SAE and metric until you got into the differential. They apparently didn't want you messing about in there so they tossed in some Whitworth.

CenTex Farmall · Mar 8, 2015

Oh no!

You mean I wasted money on that set of special Metric pipe wrenches?

NCWayne · Mar 8, 2015

I just replaced the front engine cover on a 6400 JD. The majority of fasteners on the engine were standard, but the fasteners on the sheet metal, etc were all metric.

The topper in the whole deal, to me, was the 3 fasteners that held the belt tensioner on. The bolt end that went into the engine was a standard 3/8 coarse thread, but the stud attached to the head of the bolt was metric. In other words you had both standard and metric on the same fastener.

Along those same lines, you've got to look out for standard fasteners with metric head stamps. I've fun into quite a few bolts that had standard threads, but the head stamps were either the usual 8.8, or the 10.9's that you usually see on the metric stuff.

phil_n · Mar 8, 2015

(quoted from post at 09:31:45 03/08/15) Oh no!

You mean I wasted money on that set of special Metric pipe wrenches?

You could probably use the left-handed ones on Cirtem threads.

Goose · Mar 8, 2015

In England, it would be a "spanner", not a wrench.

Just had to be a smart alec.

fixerupper · Mar 8, 2015

(quoted from post at 10:34:03 03/08/15) In England, it would be a "spanner", not a wrench.

Just had to be a smart alec.

And in Australia a flashlight is a 'torch'. When you are working on a combine at night in the middle of a tinder dry wheat field watch what you ask for when you need some light. We had that happen with an Australian crew member. And yes an open wrench is a 'spanner'

donjr · Mar 8, 2015

BTDT. We were noticing a surge in the engine on mine a few months ago, and pulled the front side cover that hasn't been off in quite a while. What I noticed was a good bit of oil in the area around the injector pump that was dirt and dust covered. Finding the wettest area of the dirt and digging in, I noticed that one of the bolts holding the injector pump was missing. I cleaned the whole mess up and found that it was actually two bolts missing, and the nut on the third was loose from the vibration of the engine. The only thing holding the injector pump even close to time was the injector lines!!! Any-old-how, I headed to JD to get a couple of new studs and a few nuts, which I found out they didn't have in stock, but it was a 5/16 nut. So I subbed a 5/16 bolt about an inch or so long until they came in. Wrong- the dammed thing had the wrong threads. We babied the tractor for a couple of days until the studs came in, and found that they were about an inch and a half or two inches and had a metric thread on one end and SAE on the other. They also now have a dose of locktite on them......

Janicholson · Mar 8, 2015

There are. DIN JIS and ANSI standard metric tapered pipe thread. Much overlap between them as they are all metric based. Jim

phil_n · Mar 8, 2015

When I worked in England we had three different metric threads to deal with - British, European, and Japanese. They often had different thread pitches but the threads were also different shapes - pointed or rounded on the end (the root). So even if you got the same diameter and pitch they might still not work if you tried to put a bolt with the pointed root into a nut with the flat root. But it would work the other way around.

Then of course there was always Whitworth, British Standard (BS), Imperial, and US.

If you needed to match a bolt to a nut you had to take one or the other with you to the industrial suppliers or you might spend the whole day going back and forth until you got the right one.

Texasmark1 · Mar 8, 2015

Would have to do some digging to get the facts but on here not too long ago somebody was having problems getting replacements for steel pipes on his foreign built loader. I'm thinking it was the pipe fitting but it could have been a flare.

Whatever it is, I found it disturbing if I ever lost a steel pipe on mine.

Mark

NCWayne · Mar 8, 2015

The one I changed had a plastic front cover, and it had a crack about an inch long leading out from the insert that the oil pressure relief valve cap screwed into. The new covers are all aluminum, which tells me that Deere realized that the plastic covers were junk. Unfortunately it was too late to save my customer from having a problem.

Talking about Loctite, the last person to work on this machine had used either red or green Loctite on every fastener I had to take loose. The castle nut on the bottom of the belt tensioner was on so tight that the whole bolt/stud assembly backed out together. I tried to take it loose but it rounded the head off and never moved. I wound up having to clamp it in a vice, heat it, and then use a long handled 1/2 drive ratchet to ever pop it loose. The nuts holding the fan on had been tightened and rounded off. Between the fact that the only thing you could put on the rounded nuts was an open ended wrench, and the fact they had Loctite on them, I wound up having to split them, and then still had a time getting them off. I think they actually used the green retaining compound given how tight everything was.

An idea how big of a PITA it was....it too me nearly 8 hours to get it apart, but only 4 to put it all back together.

Dan Richardson · Mar 13, 2015

My 1988 GMC pickup with a 350 is metric. Go figger.

JohnTioga CountyPA · Mar 13, 2015

I was helping a friend replace the water pump on a jap car several years back when they actually included a wrench kit with the car. The first thing that happened was the wrench stripped out on the first bolt. Just rounded out like it was made of lead. He went and bought a new metric set and that ended up just rounding off the corners of the bolts. We finally got the job done with a grinder and trusty vise grips. I don't mind european metrics but won't go near the asian stuff.

No metric wrenches?

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

Well-known Member

Well-known Member

Member

New User

Similar threads