Update 31.May.2007
Today's topic: metric hardware hell.
Good times and bad times today. Not much work getting done because of that whole "job" thing, but I did get my McMaster order in and found a local source for the AGM Miata Battery. Did you know that almost all of the Miata batteries (see WestCo on PPBBS) are the same, and made by the same company - East Penn Mfg Co? Found that out today. So no need to order a WestCo from CA when BatteriesPlus has the exact same battery locally, for the same price. Plus, the UPS guy hates me enough as it is.
The good? I got my replacement trailing arm monoballs that Dr K ordered for me from Steve Weiner today. I also got these:
my caliper machined from VCI. Beautiful. I also got the hub spacers, so I can now reassemble the front hubs. I was anxious to bolt them up to check the fit, and that's when things went downhill.
The original caliper bolts are now too short to fit through the adapters. VCI didn't send new bolts (??? - I called and they're throwing some M12 40mm bolts in the mail for me), so I scrounged around and found some that worked - the trailing arm-spring plate bolts. I tried to bolt everything together, but I really need to press on the bearing retainers, put in new bearings, etc, so it didn't work so well. No biggie. In doing this, I noticed that the trailing arm bolts were rusty and boogered up - so I figured I'd just order some more.
I looked the bolt up in PET and that's when I realized I had a problem - it's a M12 x 1.5. Dammit. Standard coarse threads for an M12 bolt are 1.75. McMaster has some fine thread M12 bolts, but none in grade 10.9. Dammit. Then I realized that Porsche probably used M12 x 1.5 for all M12 bolts, and sure enough they did. That means the $12 worth of M12 x 1.75 bolts I just ordered for my sway bars are worthless. Dammit. Even better, I can't even
find the right bolts - anywhere. Dammit. It really, really sucks trying to buy even the slightest non-standard metric hardware in the US.
So, I get to spend more time trying to find the following:
- M12 x 1.5 Socket Cap Screw, 50mm-60mm length, g 8.8 or better.
- M12 x 1.5 Hex Cap Screw, 40mm, g 10.9
- M12 x 1.5 Locknut, g 10.9
I found ONE M12 x 1.5 socket cap bolt - it was 180mm long. If worst comes to worst, I'll buy that, cut it to length, and use a die to cut the rest of the threads. What are the odds my tap and die set has a M12 x 1.5?
As a last resort I can buy the last 2 items from Porsche (for $5 each - $40 for $4 worth of hardware
). For the the socket cap bolt, I'm kinda screwed unless I find the right part.