It’s grim up north.

I should have added ‘and took all of the fun out of measuring’. Last century I was involved in a job for some Americans and IIRC got some values in slugs, which is an imperial measure of inertia.

I worked on the roads 30ish years ago.I asked the clerk of works what the dip was (the measurement from the string line to the road surface no lasers back then) for the capping layer,he said 375mm I said what's the tolerance he replied inch either way.

When I was going to school they were sort of teaching us both and, as a result I kind of know my way around both systems but, it still takes some thought.

The Metric Vs Standard ( as it is called here ) discussion is a funny one, and as I found out on one of my threads, some people get quite emotional about it.

Some inch sizes shouldn't have been messed with ( but they were).

For example a Morris Minor & a Mini have a 4 on 4" wheel bolt pattern.

English Fords have 4 on 4.25, Triumph 4 x 3.75, etc.

That's how they were built, they are easy to remember round numbers, why change it...



I do all my fab work on cars that were designed and built in Inch sizes by using those Inch sizes, and Metric for the metric ones.

It all seems to go much smoother that way...



Apparently even some very smart people can get this whole conversion thing wrong...

I know this is a digression of Dez’s thread, but my 74 Mk1 Escort has Imperial engine and Metric suspension, it’s part mk1, part mk2. Always has been.

That is largely what I do. I work with mostly imperial designed and built vehicles/buildings/machinery these days, so that’s what I tend to use most. But if it’s matrix vehicle I will defer to that system, like with the lada.

The funny thing is the UN system is actually more standardised than metric. You can have EITHER fine or coarse in any diameter or GTFO. Metric had an ISO pitch per diameter which is generally quite coarse for the diameter, then various fine or super fine threads that no one can quite decide on a standard for. Annoyingly the worst offenders for this are the ones used most on metric vehicles- m10, m12, and m14. M12x1.25, although very common on Japanese vehicles, is rarely used outside of the automotive world. Same with m10x1.25.

I’m not actually old enough to have been tought a single bit of imperial at school.
Being a young whippersnapper at a mere 38 years old, we were thought we’d never need any of that old rubbish. Then I got into old cars, old bikes and old houses, and I quickly learnt that if you’re ever going to understand anything you’re working on, then yes you do really need to know it. it’s almost all I work in now. I find myself converting metric into imperial far more than I do the other way round!

Just thought of another one that always makes me laugh - the Ford 1.8 TDCi Duratorq/Endura D which has all imperial fasteners in the block, and all metric in the head and everything else that bolts to the engine. Must be the latest to have that sort of silliness, think they stopped making them about 2012.

Tell me about it, even worse is the "engineers" tape measure that is marked in tenths of a foot 😳 I've launched a few of them over the side in my time 🤣