So I recently bought the cheapest kayak carrier for a rooftop rack that money could buy of Amazon. Of course it has no brand name, just the word “China” on the box. This is not being used for highway use but part of a storage system for a kayak in a shed. For that reason I bought the cheapest one I could get. The overall the quality is quite good, especially for how little I paid compared to the cost of the big name brands. I think it would be perfectly safe on the road as long as people realize what I found next.
Of course with it being so cheap, some parts were missing and others were the wrong size. I went to the local farm store and matched them up… or at least THOUGHT I did. The nuts used a half inch wrench. A 13mm would also fit with some slop (half inch is about 12.7mm) but anything smaller than a half including a 12mm would not. I kinda assumed it would all be metric coming out of China and then figured it was all standard when I realized the 1/2 inch wrench fit it best. Anyway, it used metric threads on a fastener with heads meant for a standard wrench.
Has anyone ever seen standards mixed up like this before? I am guessing so but it is the first time for me. I have seen metric and standard fasteners on the same car before but usually something like the engine, an older design, is standard and the rest metric. I have NEVER seen a metric bolt using standard heads.
I work in HVAC, and all the fasteners in our industry are SAE–except for the studs which extend from a condenser fan motor, and the nuts which go on those studs. Those nuts are metric 9 mm, and the threads are some kind of metric threading. What’s interesting is if the motor is an aftermarket motor with multiple mounting options, the side-mount screws are 1/4" SAE, but the stud-mount nuts are metric 9 mm.
I don’t recall ever running into a metric threaded bolt with the head for an SAE wrench. I occasionally experience much grief repairing household lamps made outside the USA b/c the hollow tube the cord runs through, its external threads are metric rather than SAE. I wonder if there are some threaded fastener dimensions in new cars that remain SAE, even though the rest of the car is metric? Wheel lug nuts for example. Spark plug threads?
Who knows but I would suspect sloppy manufacturing so nothing reallly fits. That’s why we have adjustable wrenches, and that new fangled socket that fits everything that I can’t find.
Or maybe they just bought a discount bin of bolts that were rejects.
Maybe just a simple misunderstanding between the customer and the supplier… Remember the metric system and the NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter…
My former next-door neighbor, a PHd Astrophysicist Engineer, worked on that program. It wasn’t his mistake, but he was high enough up there to have caught the error. But he had to boringly admit that everyone was so cocky that no one was looking…
I don’t think it’s all that unusual. The tolerances (like a difference of .3 mm in this case) are pretty small. Minor variations both in wrenches and hex heads - in my experience - make things like this pretty normal. Any time I’ve had a 13mm that I think might be a problem to loosen up, I’ll check first to see if a 1/2" fits (b/c if it does, it fits more tightly). Sometimes it fits…sometimes not. The same with, e.g. 10mm and 3/8" (e.g. bleeders), 19mm / 3/4" and 21mm / 13/16" (e.g. lug nuts). As for the latter, on all of my current vehicles I can use either SAE or metric.
My grandfather built a lot of various kinds of things - always liked to say “we ain’t launching rocket ships off this baby.” You know - like this ain’t NASA and sweating over tiny variations is meaningless. Honestly, in this case it might also have been a smart decision - a company wanting to sell globally and accommodate customers whether metric of SAE.
Yeah, I have a holder with metric and sae small to large. If I’m working on something I’ll often grab both. I just see which fits the best and seldom look at what the size is. Metrics are painted blue and a red dab on sae to make putting the back easier.
What a great video, I had not seen that one. Being retired Air Force and living between an Air Force Base and an International Airport, and being a Licensed Unmanned Aerial Systems Pilot, I have an interest in such videos, not the crash and death ones, but the “nail crunching, life and death, saves…”
However, for all to read, in the event of a crash landing, you do not, (Repeat… You Do Not…) have to removed your shoes before a crash landing. Some airlines still might tell you that, but the FAA is instructing the airlines that it is not necessary, but some are slow to re-print their safety pamphlets…
It is an old wives tale that the heels on a pair of High Heels would puncture the emergency slide, they will not… There was also the possibility that a person wearing high heels sliding down an emergency slide might injure someone sliding into them and that is a possibility, but not a big concern when escaping from the burning wreckage of a crashed airplane… And once you are on the ground, being bare foot is a real disadvantage…
The safest thing to do is wear sensible tie-up Shoes, not flip-flops, sandals, and such…
The bolts that mount the seat belt retractors to the body on a 1999 Toyota Camry are 7/16 fine thread with metric bolt heads. I guess they wanted something in between 10 and 12mm.
