Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] Blackening sockets/wrenches stamped markings.

From: "William Engle Sr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 10:49:41 -0400

15 and 18 mm are used more in the US than the rest of the world.
Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Shop-talk [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
[email-masked]
Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2014 11:18 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] Blackening sockets/wrenches stamped markings.

Metric is easy to ID by sight...

"Give me a 12mm."  (I find that 9 times out of ten, it's a 12mm.)  8>)

If it looks much bigger, "give me the 14mm."

Of course, the 17mm is always too small and the 19mm is too big, and for 
some reason, no metric set comes with an 18mm!

Eric P
"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational 
being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory." Ralph 
Waldo Emerson 
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From: Scott Hall <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:50:56 -0400

That is *exactly* how I determine metric socket sizes, and I too
continuously wonder why there isn't an 18mm.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 11:17 AM, <[email-masked]> wrote:

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From: Mike Rambour <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:54:59 -0700

life is so much simpler with Whitworth cars and tools :)

     mike

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From: John Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 09:03:12 -0700

> 15 and 18 mm are used more in the US than the rest of the world.

There's different standards on what size bolt head you get with a given 
size threaded shank.

F'rinstance, a Japanese M8 bolt will be a 12mm head, but a Euro (or 
usually US) DIN M8 bolt will be a 13mm head and you'll pretty much never 
find anything that takes a 12mm socket on a German car.

For some years Detroit, in particular, chose their metric fastener head 
sizes to be close enough to let you use SAE wrenches - and while we all 
know to grab an 8mm for a 5/16 head and vice-versa, 1/2in fits most 
13mm, 5/8 usually fits 16mm, 19mm and 3/4 are interchangeable as are 7/8 
and 22mm, the true Detroit oddity of the '80s was the M6 fastener with 
the 11mm head sized to fit a 7/16 wrench.

Many older M12 fasteners and lots of parts-store M12s are 19mm head but 
I think most every mfr now (as true of my BMWs as my Suburban) uses 18mm 
heads on their M12s.

If you're wrenching on any German product in the last dozen years you're 
going to need a set of 'outie' Torx sockets, though...

John.

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From: John Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 09:10:19 -0700

> the 11mm head sized to fit a 7/16 wrench.

9/16 is usually too tight on a 14mm head but you will, at times, find 
14mm fastener heads that were obviously sized to fit a 9/16 wrench, too.

John.

[email-masked]

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From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 17:38:58 -0500

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 11:03 AM, John Miller <[email-masked]> wrote:
> There's different standards on what size bolt head you get with a given size
> threaded shank.
>
> F'rinstance, a Japanese M8 bolt will be a 12mm head, but a Euro (or usually
> US) DIN M8 bolt will be a 13mm head and you'll pretty much never find
> anything that takes a 12mm socket on a German car.
>
> sizes to be close enough to let you use SAE wrenches

There are also all the lovely 80s stuff that has metric heads and SAE
threads, to meet some silly contract requirement.  I do not miss
working on that crap, at all.

For the original question, when I was running a shop w/ a quick lube
lane, which used cheap shop-owned tools, we used a tire crayon to
color in the etching, which worked fine, but wasn't terribly durable.
Wiping some model paint in the depressions would probably work great.

-- 
David Scheidt
[email-masked]

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