RonA
specialist in repairing sealed for life equipment
- Messages
- 1,939
- Location
- Stockton on Tees, UK
My next door neighbour runs a much modified Lotus Élan, now with an updated galvanised chassis & transplanted with a 2 litre Zetec engine.
The other day he noticed a bit of steering wander & after inspection determined the track rod ends were in need of replacement. A new pair were duly purchased but the body of replacements were much longer leaving the option of chopping some of the body off (I.e. the threaded bit) or extending the thread on the track rod itself. Using thread gauge he determined the TPI at 20 & dia as 1/2", which consulting the old Zeus data book looks like UNF.
Not having a suitable die he went off to that very well known purveyor of all things machinery wise & bought himself a set of combined metric/UNF/BSP taps & dies. However the 1/2" 20 TPI die in the set does not seem to fit on the track rod or a standard 1/2" UNF bolt for that matter.
Strangely the dies are not marked UNF but just NF.
Research on old t'internet comes up with NF being the old USA standard before everybody got together to come up with the common standard of UNF.
Anybody else experienced similar problems or can shed some light on what's going a wry.
RonA
The other day he noticed a bit of steering wander & after inspection determined the track rod ends were in need of replacement. A new pair were duly purchased but the body of replacements were much longer leaving the option of chopping some of the body off (I.e. the threaded bit) or extending the thread on the track rod itself. Using thread gauge he determined the TPI at 20 & dia as 1/2", which consulting the old Zeus data book looks like UNF.
Not having a suitable die he went off to that very well known purveyor of all things machinery wise & bought himself a set of combined metric/UNF/BSP taps & dies. However the 1/2" 20 TPI die in the set does not seem to fit on the track rod or a standard 1/2" UNF bolt for that matter.
Strangely the dies are not marked UNF but just NF.
Research on old t'internet comes up with NF being the old USA standard before everybody got together to come up with the common standard of UNF.
Anybody else experienced similar problems or can shed some light on what's going a wry.
RonA