Metric and imperial fasteners, it's a unwritten rule.

Don't ya love it when some of the metric bolt and nut fasteners are replaced with imperial nuts and bolts? I ran into this on a few bikes were the rear shock nuts and bolts were changed out. It's one of the things I did first without thinking much about it. Was to inspect the bike and looking at what fasteners I needed to change to metric. Even when a stripped out 6mm bolt can be repaired with a metric heli coil or retapped to a 7mm thread on a exhaust port. Finding 7mm fasteners can be tough to find. Not all the industrial hardware places have them. There not popular originally but there handy when repairing a stripped out 6mm thread.

I posted this tip in Craig's Husqvarna news paper.

When we come across a Allen hex cap screw were the hex is stripped out. We can use a flat nosed punish on the face of the screw by hitting the punch around the hex to close it up. Then take the Allen hex wrench and by lining it up to the orginal hex bang in the wrench to make a proper fitting hex again. Then you can remove the Allen cap screw. If we hold the Allen wrench perfectly lined up when we cold form the hex the fit up can be better than the orginal. You can reuse the screw or replace it. Sometimes were in a bind. We can order new screws too. I order from the BOLT DEPOT. I find the fasteners very affordable there and there very fast filling my orders. You can order one bolt or dozens. I stock 6mm & 8mm fasteners on hand.

There's a unwritten law about not using imperial fasteners to replace metric fasteners. I get it when we need two different sized wrenches when taking a bike apart. It's a PIA. Keeping it all orginal goes for fasteners too.

With no posts added to my post here I hope that everyone isn't using imperial fasteners instead of replacing metric fasteners with metric fasteners.........

In imperial measures:
I'm 1 yard 3 feet 3 hands and 7/8 thumbs high and weight 2928.57 ounces !

Before yards, feet my old land deed for my place in vt was measured in rods.

I don't struggle with finding metric.
Most everything I stock is metric. Stuff at work is whitworth tho..

i get some weird looks from coworkers but i say the u.s. should have switched to metric a long time ago.

The metric system is a more exact measurement of doing things(fasteners and machining) I guess it was an arm wrestle between us and the rest of the world wether we go metric or the rest of the world goes imperial. We were Half metric and half imperial on our cars for a while.

Since I was in charge of my department I started stocking metric fasteners. All our sister companies over seas were metric already. We have manufacturing plants in every country. We had a foot hold in the European countries in the late 1800's.
The orginal owner/inventor had the fore sight to see the business potential over there.

Metric is so much easier. Multiples of 10.

Like we did in Canada, by the end of grade school we knew both and had to swap it around so much on measurements, temp and speeds in the 70s. When the speed limit signs changed that was hard on the old folks. They had decals at the DMV for free to stick on the plastic lens of the speedo in your cars lol

i wouldnt mind keeping miles...

I believe some metric screws are hard to get. I had trouble getting 7mm hex and Allen cap screws. I'm not sure if there is a 9mm, 11mm, ect. The 7mm is great for replacing the broken or stripped 6mm in the exhaust port. When I was assembling the 155mm howitzers for the us army everything was heli coiled. We had a heli coil air operated gun. I get a tad confused at how many thread pitches there are for each metric size.

The French use m7 on some engine bolts but yes they are uncommon.
We keep miles and our timber is sold in feet lol
Still have both measurements on out tape measures.
Occasionally get issues with people manufacturing if we say twenty millimetres sometimes we get stuff twenty inches as people work to different standard units.
Not often but sometimes.

7mm nor any other size matric is hard to find. I bought 7mm boots at Home Depot, not much easier to get than that.

It's not more exact, but it sure is a lot easier.

I just love it when manufacturers decide to make life difficult for anything after market. Ferrari and Fiat many years ago used M13x1.00 for some of their brake fittings !
Another that springs to mind is some of the older Volvo's. Some 120 and 140 series cars used a mixture of metric and imperial fixing bolts and brake fittings.

The ball bearings in the head stock of my 73 Cr fame are imperial.

www.mcmaster.com industrial supply offers new balls.

Thanks Bill, but I live in England where we all have imperial balls Plus they are easy to get here as well

you can get brass ones in Germany....

I had to Google Imperial Threads just to see what kind of Threads we were talking about. Sounds as though we are just talking about UNC and UNF. It seams that the Thread system We adopted from the English and Standardized in the USA many Years back has had many Names most of which we associate when we learned the system. Keep in mind in the US when these bikes were built getting Metric fasteners didn't happen at the local hardware store like it does today. You had to go to the Dealer that sold the bike and order them ! Lucky for Us we only have only two real thread systems left. OK so we also have Pipe Thread, British Pipe Thread and Helicoil Threads and probably a few more. Back at the turn of the last century every manufacture used what ever Thread system they wanted so nothing would fit anything else. I used to buy Taps from Boeing Surplus, yes the Airplane people, and buy them in bags for $5 a pound. Then I would manufacture a part and Tap it only to find out the Tap I had used was an odd Thread count or pitch that some Engineer had used for some specific application and no standard Bolt could fit. Has anybody ever figured out why when You use a buy a Standard Tap set, it will come with a couple of Tapered Taps or Pipe Taps, yes another system, and they always include two 1/8" Taps, one with 27 threads and one with 28 threads per inch ? I mean, has anybody ever tried to count the Threads per inch on a 1/8" pipe to see if your using the right one ?