Re: Diversity - good or bad ?

On 1/11/25 9:23 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 19:21:58 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
 

On 1/11/25 2:52 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 11 Jan 2025 12:04:37 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>

Not a hundred different 'diverse'  screw threads depending...

>
>
Memories of a misguided youth working on British sports cars...

>
    Still have your Whitworth set ?  :-)

 I never had Whitworth tools although I did have to buy the fasteners from
a shop that specialized in Brit cars.
 It did bite me a couple of times. For installing the distributor drive
pinion the manual was very specific about using a particular length of
screw in the drilled and tapped hole, I'll say 2 1/2". I didn't have one
that long so I used a shorter one. The extra length was so you didn't drop
the whole mess into the sump. I hadn't put oil in the crankcase at that
point but there were a lot of little cap screws holding the sump cover on
to retrieve the pinion.
 What I do have are several sets of metric and SAE wrenches. Both the Ford
and the Harley go metric in the strangers places. At least the Suzuki
bikes  and the Toyota are 100% metric.
 Then there are the Torx drivers, the weird little drivers used in
electronics stuff that are close but no cigar. Damn them all to the fires
of hell, starting with Harley. They use #25 and #27 Torx screws. #25 is
just the right size to strip out a #27 head and a lot of the Torx sets
skip #27.

   Heh ... been there, suffered similar.
   Even way back in the 80s, US cars started
   mixing metric and SAE bolts - sometimes on the
   same component like water pumps. Just insane.
   Haven't seen any Whitworth in the USA (yet)
   except on Brit imports.
   And then, as you noted, those weird little 'torx'
   and similar have their own threading universe.
   Oh, Torx aren't always 'little'. They ARE likely
   best for fully-automated assembly though, and
   to hell with any humans who have to cope after.
   They want you to buy a whole new whatever ...
   I don't mind SAE, I don't mind metric ... but just
   PICK ONE for yer product line and STICK with it.
   Waiting for an 'AI' to design the 'most optimal'
   thread spacing/depth/twist - and then we'll have
   to buy yet ANOTHER big tool-set.