Need some itty bitty machine screws

Llama used an oddball proprietary thread on those screws. You will not find a box at the ace hdw.

Paul K. Dickman

Could the grip screw hole on the least valuable pistol be bumped up to M4 x 0.7?

Any one know their rationale for doing so?

"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Before 1947 several countries had their own metric standards:

The standards are a compromise between the need for coarse tapped threads in weak materials like iron and aluminum castings and fine threads on screws to maximize the root diameter for strength. That's why we have coarse and fine pitches. Metric standards are in between and not ideal for either, as you'd learn fixing motorcycles.

-jsw

It might be they had the tooling to make them and so used it. IIRC it was MG with the XPAG engine that had French metric threaded bolts but with Whitworth head sizes as a result of using machine tools moved from the French Hotchkiss machine gun factory to England due to the war.

Hey, I like that. Thanks for the tip, I'll try it.

Yessir, I had that discussion twice yesterday when the hobby shops directed me to Ace Hardware.

Now, why would that not come up when I searched on that? I am not sure the III-A are the same, but I'll order a few and see.

Thanks

Sure would not want to do that. That's a 33% increase in diameter. On a couple, the grips screw goes through a flat spring. I would not want to enlarge that hole.

My Google-ing led me to a couple of forum entries on "M3-.7". One said it was probably English BS-4 size, which is a very close match. Those are still available in the UK, for obscure restorations. The other (and mentioned here) said the Basque were isolated people who did things their way, to their own standards.

And I thought I had it bad growing up with the 3 different standards. Whitworth was the oddball, metric should have been embraced years sooner by Americans, and most SAE/USS would be gone by now.

As for plumbing, is that a 15/16-27 aerator or a 55/64-27?

One learns to use anti-seize on steel bolts going into aluminum housings, too.

I also saw some guy selling stainless ones on ebay They looked like cheap cheeseheads, but I think it was $9 for a set of four.

Paul K. Dickman

I've considered removing and coating the accessible fasteners when I bought a new car, and decided against the risk of breaking a machine that's under warranty since the torque specs in the shop manual are for dry threads.

Instead I sprayed the engine and underside with LPS-3 in the hope it would seep into the thread gaps enough to keep out water. Generally they have loosened easily when I did need to remove them years later, but a few hidden ones rusted and were much harder to remove.

-jsw

Didn't the waxy film of LPS-3 (I've not used it yet) cause the engine to act like a dirt magnet?

I bought a tube of aluminum anti-seize back in the '80s to install spark plugs into aluminum V-6 and V-8 heads. Since then, I've used it sparingly and infrequently, so that same tube is still my supply. It sure works well on everything I've used it. I'm glad, because I absolutely hate galling of s/s on s/s hardware and stripping aluminum threads/ruining high-dollar parts.

It can be wiped off flat surfaces.

For stainless fasteners in aluminum in marine service, I started using a Loctite brand zinc antiseize. Expensive, but we'll see next time I have to remove a fastener. Surely better than all the drilling out, etc. to remove broken off ss in aluminum. When I rebuilt the trim-tilt on my outboard, over half the ss bolts broke off, even with several weeks of intermittent heat/penetrant treatment. Which is why boat shops only replace the entire unit for several boat bucks.

Pete Keillor

This is only of historical interest, but back in the '60s I bought two cans of *lead* based anti-seize, on the recommendation of the tech guys at Rodi Marine in Ft. Lauderdale (who mainained several of the Miami - Nassau powerboat racers) to use with zinc-plated and stainless bolts in "white metal" and aluminum castings. It was for my dad's Boston Whaler.

Anyway, I used it, on the boat and on the Evinrude outboard that we kept in the water, and it worked great. I used it for years afterward on my sports cars, as an all-purpose anti-seize, where it also worked great.

I still have almost a full can left, and I've been told that it's no longer available, like a lot of other lead-powder products. I don't know if that's true of not.

Does anyone else have experience with lead anti-seize?

No experience, but looks like you can still get some:

a few others:

Iteresting. I suppose the people who thought it wasn't available were just knee-jerking about the removal of lead is some other products.

I'm suprised, then, that it isn't used more widely. It was great for really difficult things like exhaust-manifod bolts and so on.

I haven't wrenched an exhaust manifold for close to 20 years, so I'm speaking from historical experience only. d8-)