Why do modern car engines have different types of bolt type heads like Torx etc?

[Nigel McBurney 1Participant @nigelmcburney1]

My wife had a Morris traveller new in 1968 and it covered 187000 miles in around 20 years,in the engine & drive train nothing was replaced with exception of the prop shaft,due to a needle bearing seizing and spinning the outer race and wearing the housing,the bearing was not worn only too much grease caused the bearing to lock up,I think it was me being heavy handed with a Wanner grease gun. all ofthe ancillaries on the engine were not replaced and engine not decoked or worked on,though I stripped and cleaned the dynamo and starter motor at around 100 k miles. oil and filter changes as per book ie 3k miles plus all greasing,On the other hand the body was a disaster,a leak in the roof filled the rear passenger foot wells with water and it went back to Cowley,for repair,after registered letter was sent to the head of the company ,and later on the timber was eaten by a strange fungus and I replaced possibly 50% of the woodwork plus some rust dealt with , Really hammered by my wife on daily journeys to work of 40 miles regular servicing with good quality Castrol oil and grease .vehicles have improved in the last fifty years and engine performance is really good until the green nutters decide to abandon i/c engines, has any one thought out how umpteen million cars are going to get their electric cars charged from our already on the limit electricity supply.Getting back to fasteners and types of screw/bolt head when I worked on hard drives the small stainless screws used (hex skt head) produced miroscopic particles of stainless steel which destroyed heads and discs,as the hex drivers suffered wear and rattled in the screw heads, so the screws were changed to torqx heads ,the drivers lasted a lot longer so perhaps other industries have found that the torqx drivers are better, in recent years i have the found that mectric head sizes have changed there were spanners in my sets that I never used,and now most sizes are used.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, my Astra clocked 144002 miles yesterday at the MOT, and there is no sign of pending failure of the clutch so far, and there is nothing in the service history to say it has every been changed. I've only driven it for 27155 miles.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 27/07/2023 11:13:19

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

Odd hardware is nothing new.

Pre WW2, Morris used Hotchkiss engines, so the threads would definitely have been metric, but probably with Whit hexagones, to suit the spanners used by the UK mechanics.

In the late 60s, the clutch on the Gardner engine a Bristoll RE buses was fixed to the flywheel by 5/16 BSF threads. BUT trhe bolts had 5/8 A/F heads!

(Gardners were resolutely Whitworth standard, until they were taken over by Perkins. It took a long time, late 60s, before they would use shell bearings rather than metalled in the block and rod! )

The Bell Housing was clamped to the flywheel housing by nine 3/8 BSF bolts, the other three fixings were 3/8UNF studs!

Standardisation? What's that?

European manufacturers seem to prefer the "odd" numbered hexagon sizes, while japanese seem to prefer "even", for their cars

Renault used 12 mm A/F nuts to secure the carburrettor on the Renault 5 because there wasn't room for 13 mm hexagon nuts.

Howard

Edited By Howard Lewis on 27/07/2023 11:27:09

[JAParticipant @ja]

Posted by martin perman on 26/07/2023 19:09:37:

My thoughts are its the car makers way of trying to stop the average man fix his own car by making the cost of specialist tools to expensive.

Martin P

Agreed.

If the car is modern the owner has to be dissuaded from trying to fix his car. All are far too complex for even the service monkeys (I cannot call them anything else) at the dealers to fix. Looking under the bonnet of my 16 month old petrol engined I can recognise the battery. I think there is an engine under a lot of plastic ducting. As for finding and getting at the sparking plugs, forget it.

JA

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

One reason for mixed fastener heads on cars is the origin of the parts. A SAAB 9-5 can have a Fiat engine and GM transmission or Japanese for the automatic.
Another reason for not using Hex head or slotted/cross recess is tool wear. Torx, spline etc tool bits last much longer so less wasted time chaging them.

Robert.

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Posted by JA on 27/07/2023 11:37:06:

Posted by martin perman on 26/07/2023 19:09:37:

My thoughts are its the car makers way of trying to stop the average man fix his own car by making the cost of specialist tools to expensive.

Martin P

Agreed.

If the car is modern the owner has to be dissuaded from trying to fix his car. All are far too complex for even the service monkeys (I cannot call them anything else) at the dealers to fix. Looking under the bonnet of my 16 month old petrol engined I can recognise the battery. I think there is an engine under a lot of plastic ducting. As for finding and getting at the sparking plugs, forget it.

JA

Maybe it's because I started driving when modern engines were already a thing, and started repairing my own vehicles out of economic necessity in a way that pushed me to try things that felt out of my comfort zone…

But honestly, it's not nearly as hard as you might be deceived into thinking by appearances!

.

Sure there's a handful of tasks that need you to plug in a computer (and I do mean a handful), and some emissions system sensor faults which are easier to diagnose if you at least have a cheap code reader box from the auto factors.

But even on a modern, ECU controlled engine which is packaged very tightly indeed, there's nothing to stop a mechanically literate person making their own repairs, especially if they have reference to a good workshop manual (ideally the OEM's one), other than having the confidence to try.

[JellyParticipant @jelly]

Posted by Ady1 on 27/07/2023 10:01:54:

When I worked the black cabs we got 100,000 out the first clutch with 90% town work then decided to change it so decent drivers do make a difference

Brand new car factory stuff also tends to be better quality and more longevitous than the garage OEM stuff you get at repairs time. Even the "branded" stuff can be not really that great

When it comes to brakes, clutches, and tyres, the driver's care/skill will always make a far bigger difference than the parts…

I have to agree I have found a marked difference in quality between true OEM parts and aftermarket "pattern-parts", but by god do some manufacturers make it awkward to interact with their parts departments and the service offered is dire compared to using a decent auto-factors.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Nigel McBurney 1 on 27/07/2023 10:10:31:

… vehicles have improved in the last fifty years and engine performance is really good until the green nutters decide to abandon i/c engines, has any one thought out how umpteen million cars are going to get their electric cars charged from our already on the limit electricity supply…..

It's the fossil-fueled nutters you need to worry about Nigel! They're in denial about two much bigger problems: the oil supply running out, and man-made climate change.

The future of IC engines depends entirely on cheap oil. Pure fantasy to believe that mineral oil supplies are inexhaustible, the question is when demand for oil exceeds supply, not if. Prices are going to sky-rocket.

I'm not sure why the need for green is so difficult to comprehend. Is it just that folk can't bear to admit they got it wrong? Can't cope with any form of change? Fear? Vested interests? Or simply that the old ways are the best, even when it's obvious they aren't.

Over the last 40 years there's been a barrage of anti-green propaganda, most of which has proved wrong: green energy will always be expensive; green will never replace coal as a way of generating electricity; electric cars won't work; it's all too difficult etc etc etc. All deniers have managed to do is delay change, causing a lot of avoidable damage, whilst green engineering provides answers.

Although IC engines did a great job in the past, I'm afraid the end is in sight. They are not future proof. Given that transport is vital, I say it's essential to find alternatives to Internal Combustion pronto! Expecting oil to last for ever isn't an alternative.

Never mind where electricity for cars is coming from, ask where will the oil for IC come from in 30 years time? One of the two is a dead-end.

Dave

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

My old American lawn mower (no longer used but still in my garden shed) has Unified on the B&S engine and metric on the rest. Can't be to stop you servicing it as manual tells you how to. Its replacement (now also getting old) is all metric. Its manual tells me that it has no user servicable parts, strange how I have managed to keep it going for so long!
When I connected our cooker, I was surprised to find torx screws. I guess to stop me doing it, hah.I guess for some people that is a good thing. I overheard a conversation in a local shop. To the effect that a customer wasn't going to be ripped off by the store that sold him a new cooker (I agree the price he was quoting was a rip off). He asked the assistant if the cable he was going to buy was OK, she did admit that she hadn't a clue. Anyway he bought it and some earthing sleeve, he did know a bit. I thought to myself, they don't sell any cable suitable for a cooker, later went to check, he had bought 2.5 cable to wire his cooker – oops. By this time he had left the store!

[TrickyParticipant @tricky]

The replacement of oil derived fuel for ICEs is already under way. For example look at P1fuels.

[Maurice TaylorParticipant @mauricetaylor82093]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 27/07/2023 13:17:18:

Posted by Nigel McBurney 1 on 27/07/2023 10:10:31:

… vehicles have improved in the last fifty years and engine performance is really good until the green nutters decide to abandon i/c engines, has any one thought out how umpteen million cars are going to get their electric cars charged from our already on the limit electricity supply…..

It's the fossil-fueled nutters you need to worry about Nigel! They're in denial about two much bigger problems: the oil supply running out, and man-made climate change.

The future of IC engines depends entirely on cheap oil. Pure fantasy to believe that mineral oil supplies are inexhaustible, the question is when demand for oil exceeds supply, not if. Prices are going to sky-rocket.

I'm not sure why the need for green is so difficult to comprehend. Is it just that folk can't bear to admit they got it wrong? Can't cope with any form of change? Fear? Vested interests? Or simply that the old ways are the best, even when it's obvious they aren't.

Over the last 40 years there's been a barrage of anti-green propaganda, most of which has proved wrong: green energy will always be expensive; green will never replace coal as a way of generating electricity; electric cars won't work; it's all too difficult etc etc etc. All deniers have managed to do is delay change, causing a lot of avoidable damage, whilst green engineering provides answers.

Although IC engines did a great job in the past, I'm afraid the end is in sight. They are not future proof. Given that transport is vital, I say it's essential to find alternatives to Internal Combustion pronto! Expecting oil to last for ever isn't an alternative.

Never mind where electricity for cars is coming from, ask where will the oil for IC come from in 30 years time? One of the two is a dead-end.

Dave

Hi Dave ,what sort of battery car have you got ?

Maurice

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

So where is the fossil fuel going to come from? Lots of alternatives

Biodiesel

Gaseous hydrogen, either in a fuel cell or burned in a IC engine

Methane made from hydrogen and CO2 extracted from the atmosphere. It's easier to keep methane in compressed state, bigger molecules don't leak as easily

Ammonia made from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen.

Synthetic petrol as being pushed by Porche

They all work, but Biodiesel takes vast areas of land which we need to grow crops for humans to eat, and the others require vast quantities of hydrogen, made using electricity, so you might as well just use the electricity direct by storing it in a battery.

We really ought to clamp down on long haul flights. My brother in law has had short trips to both Vietnam, Japan and Colombia this year. In comparison my pootling around locally in my car is chicken feed. There is no tax on aviation fuel.

I already try to use the train for long trips, it's cheaper than driving. My next car will be electric, when I bought the current petrol one 10 years ago electric were a much less practical option

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

As long as we have one part moving relative to another, there will be a need for lubrication. So "clean" electric cars, buses, and machines will still need oil, in some form another. Even bicycles!

Like it or not, in many cases that will mean that nasty black stuff that comes from far underground after it has been processed.

Sure, we can utilise vegetable oils (Castrol R so beloved of vintage car enthusiasts ), or we will need to be pretty good at synthesising oils to replace / replicate mineral oils.

So maybe there will an extended future for North Sea oil rigs and Saudi Arabian wells?

Howard

Edited By Howard Lewis on 27/07/2023 17:09:55

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Maurice Taylor on 27/07/2023 16:20:42:

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 27/07/2023 13:17:18:

Posted by Nigel McBurney 1 on 27/07/2023 10:10:31:

… vehicles have improved in the last fifty years and engine performance is really good until the green nutters decide to abandon i/c engines, has any one thought out how umpteen million cars are going to get their electric cars charged from our already on the limit electricity supply…..

It's the fossil-fueled nutters you need to worry about Nigel! They're in denial about two much bigger problems: the oil supply running out, and man-made climate change.

The future of IC engines depends entirely on cheap oil. Pure fantasy to believe that mineral oil supplies are inexhaustible, the question is when demand for oil exceeds supply, not if. Prices are going to sky-rocket.

I'm not sure why the need for green is so difficult to comprehend. Is it just that folk can't bear to admit they got it wrong? Can't cope with any form of change? Fear? Vested interests? Or simply that the old ways are the best, even when it's obvious they aren't.

Over the last 40 years there's been a barrage of anti-green propaganda, most of which has proved wrong: green energy will always be expensive; green will never replace coal as a way of generating electricity; electric cars won't work; it's all too difficult etc etc etc. All deniers have managed to do is delay change, causing a lot of avoidable damage, whilst green engineering provides answers.

Although IC engines did a great job in the past, I'm afraid the end is in sight. They are not future proof. Given that transport is vital, I say it's essential to find alternatives to Internal Combustion pronto! Expecting oil to last for ever isn't an alternative.

Never mind where electricity for cars is coming from, ask where will the oil for IC come from in 30 years time? One of the two is a dead-end.

Dave

Hi Dave ,what sort of battery car have you got ?

Maurice

Doesn't matter what I drive Maurice: it's what's happening in the world that we need to worry about. Forty years of anti-green sentiment were badly wrong, so what next? Sadly Car Huggers are the problem, not Greenies.

I say transport is important. Therefore when the evidence says IC is on the way out, it's time to find an alternative.

No-one ever fixed a physical or economic problem by denying it!

Not all is lost. Providing transport without relying on cheap oil is an engineering problem that can be tackled. Bad news for petrol-heads maybe, but I don't care what the technical answer is provided it keeps the economy moving.

Belief systems shouldn't be allowed to get in the way. There are no sacred cows in engineering. If one sneaks in, it has to be slaughtered.

Dave

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

I will never own or drive an electric vehicle, my wife and I are financially comfortable with our pensions but there is no way we could justify the over priced EV's, I couldn't tow with one, without spending stupid money, and I doubt anybody would build an electric Renault Kango with a ramp and lowered floor as there would be nowhere to put the batteries so my wife would be totally housebound. We live in a village where the local bus companies don't know what a regular bus service is so when my Renault and Subaru give up the ghost so will we.

Martin P

[JAParticipant @ja]

This has wandered a long way off topic.

Dave

I live on the edge of a very rural area. The local politians are doing their best to stop the use of all cars, new and old. At the same time they are closing down the local bus services, replacing them with a half baked scheme that no one understands using transport that can be called by a smart phone. Really they want us to walk or use pedal bicycles. For lots it will take longer to get to the local city than it did 150 years ago.

This has nothing to do with engineering.

JA

[john halfpennyParticipant @johnhalfpenny52803]

I'm afraid that 'why o why' threads always end this way.

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

Posted by JA on 27/07/2023 18:03:29:

This has wandered a long way off topic.

Dave

I live on the edge of a very rural area. The local politians are doing their best to stop the use of all cars, new and old. At the same time they are closing down the local bus services, replacing them with a half baked scheme that no one understands using transport that can be called by a smart phone. Really they want us to walk or use pedal bicycles. For lots it will take longer to get to the local city than it did 150 years ago.

This has nothing to do with engineering.

JA

Tend to agree, in all of the the less well off who manage to keep old(ish) bangers on the road will be ignored. I suspect that this will create a major unrest when they suddenly find that they are isolated and denied the services that they are used to. The political fallout could be large.

[Chris Pearson 1Participant @chrispearson1]

If you want to mix and match heads, look no further than a Myford 254. The change wheel studs are BSF/Whit as is the tool post nut; the bolt which secures the drive belt and change wheel cover, and the carriage lock are 1/2" AF; the rest are metric.

Edited By Chris Pearson 1 on 27/07/2023 18:26:48

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

There is one great advantage in having UK sources of oil and coal (including new Oil and new coal) is that you SAVE the transport costs and emissions bring it from far off places for as long as we need it to allow the green steps to be safely taken.

Anyway, how much of the worlds emissions do we contribute? Quite a low % I would guess.

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Posted by duncan webster on 27/07/2023 16:53:39:

<SNIP>

We really ought to clamp down on long haul flights. My brother in law has had short trips to both Vietnam, Japan and Colombia this year. In comparison my pootling around locally in my car is chicken feed. There is no tax on aviation fuel.

I already try to use the train for long trips, it's cheaper than driving. My next car will be electric, when I bought the current petrol one 10 years ago electric were a much less practical option

There IS tax on aviation fuel. How much depends on the usage. With the recent duty change centered on red diesel the situation with jet fuel in the UK got complex. If you have a company turbine helicopter and say fly to a trade show yourself you pay excise duty on the fuel because it's classed as private. If you take a co-worker with you you don't duty because it's business.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fuel-used-in-private-pleasure-craft-and-for-private-pleasure-flying-excise-notice-554

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

My club bought from the local builders' stockists a set of flanged nuts for the studs holding the portable track sections to each other.

A very good idea… Would be even better if the hexagons, though metric, are not the standard ones for any ISO-M threads (M10 or M12 but not 17 or 19mm a/f). I found similarly with other building fastenings I used for parts of my workshop installations.

Over the years I have equipped my Myford ML7, which I had bought second-hand with few accessories, and found the new fittings needs an odd mixture of spanners! The basic machine is consistently BA and BS but the additions like the rear tool-post stud and its two Tee-slot nuts, and the steady's clamp-nut, seem to be Standard Somewherehandy.

.

Years ago I worked for an electronics company that serviced a lot of small Royal Navy equipment. The cases often bore warning labels about mixed thread standards.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Posted by Robert Atkinson 2 on 27/07/2023 19:01:24:

Posted by duncan webster on 27/07/2023 16:53:39:

<SNIP>

We really ought to clamp down on long haul flights. My brother in law has had short trips to both Vietnam, Japan and Colombia this year. In comparison my pootling around locally in my car is chicken feed. There is no tax on aviation fuel.

I already try to use the train for long trips, it's cheaper than driving. My next car will be electric, when I bought the current petrol one 10 years ago electric were a much less practical option

There IS tax on aviation fuel. How much depends on the usage. With the recent duty change centered on red diesel the situation with jet fuel in the UK got complex. If you have a company turbine helicopter and say fly to a trade show yourself you pay excise duty on the fuel because it's classed as private. If you take a co-worker with you you don't duty because it's business.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fuel-used-in-private-pleasure-craft-and-for-private-pleasure-flying-excise-notice-554

I think private flying is beside the point, road and rail users pay tax on fuel, railways even pay various levies on electricity (one website states this increases electricity costs by 40%,commercial aviation fuel is not taxed. Hardly a level playing field. I can appreciate that there would be an incentive for airlines to fill up abroad if we were the only country to tax aviation fuel, but there are ways round this.

[JAParticipant @ja]

What has Malthus got to do with bolt heads?

This topic has been taken for a good walk!

JA

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

I have seen comments here on different bolt heads due to access restrictions, but I don't think I have seen any informed comment on the torque-handling capabilities of the different head forms. Particularly important when you are taking the d****d things out when you have to fight both the original tighening torque plus the corrosion that's occurred in the years since it was put in in the factory…

I know that security is one reason for the odd heads you sometimes find. Sometimes misplaced ideas of security. I spent some time working in a pretty secure Government establishment. To help with resetting forgotten passwords (fairly common – their technical people were pretty switched-on but the staff they supported dwelt on a planet slightly to one side of our own) there was a "super-secure" PC in a custom cabinet with some kind of specially trusted network connection. To reduce the chance of hardware tampering, there was a clear polycarbonate cover so you could see all the components and which was secured with "security bolts". The guy in charge was very proud of this. I had to tell him that I had bought a set of bits off eBay the previous weekend for a tenner that included the bits necessary to undo his security bolts.

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