bgott
Veteran Member
Junkman's nuts post made me think about a pet peeve of mine so I decided to start a new thread to vent. Metric fasteners. Between imported machine tools, cars and other products and American manufacturers converting to metrics we've been working on metrification for over thirty years. How come it's just about impossible to find any kind of a selection of metric hardware? And when you do it can be four times the price of a comparably sized USS or SAE piece? You go just about anywhere outside of a specialty bolt store and they have racks the length of the wall with standard hardware. The metric section has five or six sizes, if you're lucky, in five or six lengths. If you need anything but the most common sizes you are forced to go to industrial suppliers that stand a chance of forcing you into a $20 minimum purchase. A case in point, of many. I was rebuilding a Jeep four banger that I wanted to mount on an engine stand. I needed four bolts 12 MM x 80 to 100 MM, IIRC. I had flexibility on the length because I could stack washers to take up the slack on this non- critical application. I shot half a day in the hiney just to keep from working on the floor. If I had needed 1/2" x 3" or 4" I could have found them anywhere. Does this give anyone else problems? Maybe I should just do what the last dealer tech did on my tractor and ram standard bolts in when I can't find the metric bolt that I need. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif