Foreign standard?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Originally Posted By: mjoekingz28
What do you call a 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, and 3/4" ratchets outside of the USA?


In what language? Inch is pouce in French and Zoll in German and asyila in Arabic. Luckily even metric ratchets come with fractional inch drives.

"Avez-vous un cliquet de trois-quart pouce, s'il vous plaît? Je donnai apporté mes propres boules."
(Do you have a 3/4 inch ratchet, please? I have brought my own bits.)
Don't blame me if she gives you a knee to the groin!
 
I gotta get this one out: Travel without any loose nuts, bolts and screws!
laugh.gif
 
I have never seen or heard of ratchets with a metric square drive coupling. They are all SAE!
 
Originally Posted By: BRZED
I have never seen or heard of ratchets with a metric square drive coupling. They are all SAE!


I have wondered about that for years.
 
Originally Posted By: larryinnewyork
Originally Posted By: BRZED
I have never seen or heard of ratchets with a metric square drive coupling. They are all SAE!


I have wondered about that for years.


A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, the young princess dropped her robe, I mean to say in the interest of and for the benefit of international compatibility, the scientific community and toolmakers decided to make, among other things like wheel and tire sizes and water pipes, tools as compatible with each other as possible. So now Franz, Jacques and Quan can use metric sockets on their ratches, while John can snap on some metric bits when working on those darn foreign cars. It's all good.
 
Originally Posted By: mjoekingz28
What do you call a 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, and 3/4" ratchets outside of the USA?
In Canada we still use 2X4s, 2X6s and 4X8 sheets of plywood.

When Canada converted to metric, the same old containers were used initially but reported in metric measurements. A US quart became 0.946 liters. An imperial quart became 1.137 liters, and so on. Some of that still goes on in what is called a soft conversion. Over time there has been a trend to a hard conversion - 1 kilogram, 1 liter, 0.5 liter etc.

Imagine the waste and confusion if ratchets (or dimensional lumber) had made a hard conversion.
 
As mentioned before, we call inch ZOLL here in Germany, its a medieval german eqivalent to the inch.

So, it´s also 1/4 Zoll, 3/8 Zoll, 1/2 Zoll ratchets and sockets (Ratschen und Nüsse) here. No Millimter ratchets.

But that is, beside water tubes in houses, the last thing we measure in Inch.
 
A few more things commonly measured in inch in metric countries:

screens and display diagonals
wheel and tire diameters
horse saddle sizes
pipe diameter and pipe threads
many threads

The inch is by the way and old Roman unit of measure and has always been defined as 1/12 of one foot.
 
If a world wide standard has been set in imperial, it's not going to change, but maybe the numbering system will change. Drive chain for example, it's still imperial, but has a new metric style numbering system. If a system is set in metric it will stay that way.

Tyres are a mix up, they were originally set in imperial, so we had 6.50x15. Then Michelin developed the radial, and they were originally fully metric, tyre and rim size....but other manufacturers started using them, so now we have the metric tyre size with imperial rim size like 185x15.
 
I have never seen a 20.7mm socket before, how do they change spark plugs overseas? They cant be using 13/16 can they?
I understand a 16mm spark plug socket(5/8)
 
All sparkplugs have metric threads, because they were first made by the Germans (Bosch) Why don't american cars have sparkplugs with imperial threads ?...?
 
Originally Posted By: Mitch
I have never seen a 20.7mm socket before, how do they change spark plugs overseas? They cant be using 13/16 can they?
I understand a 16mm spark plug socket(5/8)


How would 20.7 mm be a problem? A 21 mm socket is only 0.3 mm larger and is the proper choice. Metric spark plug sockets come in 10 mm, 12mm, 14 mm, 16 mm, 18 mm and 21 mm. Thread pitch changes with the size of the spark plug.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top