This was on the saab-900 list, but thought some of you would like to see the
discussion that ensued.
I replied that I had serious doubts that Sweden ever built anything to US
measure, and that since there are some US sockets that will almost exactly
fit some metric bolts, this may give people the wrong idea that the bolts are
US and not metric.
Carleton
--- Begin Message ---
Allan De Groot wrote:
> At 02:59 PM 12/28/01 EST, _somebody_ wrote:
> >Did you push in the trip odometer reset when the car was moving? That breaks
> >a little gear inside and stops the whole thing. I did that and had to buy a
> >used panel from a place in Ontario. It works great except I have to remember
> >to keep it under 100 on the freeway and 40 in the neighborhood, which is fine
> >because measuring in miles is stupid anyway.
I wrote this (and a bunch of other things) in answer to a question about alternative
rims and tires for a Sonett the other day on the SAABec e-mail list:
"I think it is interesting that tire specs have gone completely to metric for the
profile width, but the rim size is still (universally) given in inches. The only
attempt that I'm aware of to make a metric diameter rim is the 390mm size (Michelin
TRX) that was on the early 900 (5-door) Turbos and some performance Fraud Mustangs. I
think Avon is the only other company making a tire in that width and _if_ you can
find them they are _very_ expensive."
SAAB supposedly went to metric bolts on the chassis of the 99 in 1975, when I was
working for a dealer, but the wrenches I've used for many years since on 99 and C900
bolts are primarily SAE because the nearly equal sized metric wrenches don't fit. The
93/95/96/Sonett were _almost_ completely SAE, but there were Bosch parts on all of
them and the V-4 engine was metric because it was German. The exact same bolts are
used on the ball joints of the C900 as were used on the 93/95/96/Sonett, and they
aren't metric; I've bought new 3/8"-24 Nylock nuts for them in the past.
I worked for a company in Connecticut that made molding machinery for glass
containers. Almost all machinery in the world for production manufacturing of bottles
and glasses was built under license from Emhart because they owned all of the
patents. (Corning built machines, too, but only for their own use.) Our biggest
competition was our company's division in Sweden. We were building machines for the
North American market in inch specs, and they were building the same machines to
metric specs for the rest of the world. We occasionally got parts that were already
machined to metric specs that we then had to remachine to SAE specs before we could
use them. The biggest manufacturing growth at that time was in Third World countries,
while US bottle makers were closing plants and consolidating. Guess which division
was very busy and which one layed off most of its workers. We weren't even selling
parts because if a company had idle machines, they'd just take the needed part off of
it.
There are good reasons why we should go Metric, but on the other hand, even the
countries that have can't agree completely.
Andy in PDX OR
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