Ford F250 Starter problem

Don't fell sorry about that after all it gave me more knowledge :-) I knew about SW (schlüssel weite) in german and NV (nøgle vidde) in danish/swedish but did not have the fantasy to figur out what AF was an abreviation from.

When reading here I always having in mind that many posts come from countries that mainly use inches and other measureing units that are foreign to me. From time to time I must look some units up when I'm not able to convert them in my head.

I have a WW2 aircraft sheetmetal book that explains the gauge system, and then says that the US aircraft makers have all abandoned it and use decimal thickness.

My WW2 shipbuilding book describes steel in weight per square foot, as

10 pound plate for 1/4" thickness. Learning the conversion has been quite useful for me when buying scrap steel. Aluminum weighs roughly 1/3 as much per volume.

All I'm saying is in the AUTOMOTIVE world, the standard for 8mm bolts is a 12 mm head virtually everywhere but the North American manufacturers. - which is why a lot of "automotive" targetted socket and wrench sets have 12mm but not 13mm wrenches and sockets,

You can fix just about anything on a Toyota with 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, and 19 mm wrenches. The odd 15mm has snuck in - and the larger 21 and

24 mm are also used. 11 and 13mm are almost unheard of - Same goes for Honda, Nissan, VW, Mazda and Mitsu.

Most of those "metric" bolts you are using are coarse thread too. Pretty hard to find the fine thread metrics at most hardware stores - and even a lot of "industrial supplies" - and some of the "coarse" metrics are different than the coarse metrics used by the major japanese and european auto manufacturers too -----.

That's the beauty, as they say in the computer world, of standards --- There are so many to choose from!!!

Had a Mondeo (Mystique) on my driveway for about 12 years - and found a few surprises too. Combination of british and german engineering, built in Kansas City!!!

AF for across flats - to diferentiate from the old british way of specifying a wrench by the thread size. BSF and BSW (British standard fine and british standard whitworth) where a 1/2" bsf and 1/2" bsw used two different sized "spanners" - none of which were anywhere close to 1/2" in any dimension.

I have a $10 (Target) Swiss army knife (Victorinox Classic SD, the best little pocket knife ever made.

) in my pocket and carry a nice little Cold Steel Kobun tanto in my truck (to cut rope, of course. )

BUT, I was referring to a simple addition to the range bag. Something like this:

I have the triangular type (alas, with near-zero experience), but I've seen them used to good effect.

Den 17-02-2013 07:28, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca skrev:

I know I'm spoiled. In this city we do have a very well supplied hardware store that carries metric in both coarse and fine and also carries imperial coarse. The other stuff they are willing to order even if you only need say 10 nuts.

I recently bought some 10.9 12mm x 1.25 mm extra fine bolts for my Honda. Surprisingly they were cheaper from the dealer than the local hardware store. jsw

I have nowhere near the skill and training (or interest) to be a gunsmith. I've read some books on it but took away only what I could use in building lab instruments.

Scrapers like that generally require small work to be held in a solid bench vise, which is way too much to lug around. The closest thing I have in the car is a triangular needle file to sharpen pruning saw teeth. I can free a stuck car with a big lever as long as I have a sharp saw to cut it. Do you remember what I posted about piling rocks around the wheel so they would fall in the hole when the wheel is raised?

The vise is another guy's strong hands. But I grok what you say.

Oh, yes. I've used sand, but rocks would be much better.

On 2/16/2013 2:48 PM, Ed Huntress wrote: ...

The parts vendors are supply what the end-user specs; not the other way 'round. If it's SAE, it's 'cuz GM says so, not because some vendor chooses to make it that way.

And, these are holes/fasteners in the same assembly (the belt tensioner subassembly/heater coolant intermediary flow passage between block and hose connection) so it's not like one part is SAE while the rest are metric--it's mixed on the same sub-assembly.

Well, that's the question: Why are they doing that? It's probably a cost issue, and it may have something to do with the costs at the vendor level -- tooling, inventory, testing equipment, or whatever.

Den 17-02-2013 14:11, Jim Wilkins skrev:

I think the answer to that will be: Quantity since Honda is buying a lot more than your local hardware store.

There's where I've no real clue as to why they would choose to do so altho I'm sure there was/is a reason.

At this point (or as recently as 2003) for a production item as high in numbers as the 3.8L transverse V6 that GM has used in millions of vehicles for heaven only knows how long it's been since it was introduced there's certainly no reason to think there's any limitation on what vendors can do to supply whatever GM spec's to them.

It seems very strange, indeed that would have left one set as SAE and all else not--that would seem to lead to a higher cost both for inventory and in likelihood of mismatches than otherwise.

But, I've no clue other than I discovered it and was curious enough that while was fetching the wrench (as I recall it was 7/16" that needed; it wasn't large) I brought a 1/4" bolt back from the bin just to check and indeed it was the whole bolt, not just an english head size on a metric bolt.

Agreed, it's peculiar and I've no explanation. I've an ex-SIL that works for DENSO but their production is all brakes and steering parts so doubt he'd have any real knowledge on this one...the plant there does mostly Ford but have a couple of the TN-built Japanese lines as well and an occasional GM run will sneak in but it's the exception.

The above is what really floored me...

I'm even more spoiled - a great industrial fastener distributor that started out as a supplier of automotive upholstery "findings" - so they carry just about any fastener part you could immagine - 5 miles away Spae Naur Kemsies.

That's not out of the ordinary. I get a laugh out of guys looking for on-line places to buy parts for imports when so often the part is cheaper from the dealer than any third party supplier. Particularly parts that are a little bit "unique".

I hope I get a chance to look into it. It must be something simple.