Vintage, Imperial Tools What Ones?

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Unless you are going back to the 30's or 40's most things are metric, crank bolts are sometimes 9/16, some bolts are 2BA but an 8mm spanner fits these almost perfectly. Handy to keep a small adjustable for some larger awkward sized nuts, one slightly akward metric problem was a 70's 3TTT stem with 7mm allen key fittings.
 
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I have just dismantelled a 1980 Raleigh Twenty and had to drag out the Whitworth spanners to do it, no metric at all that I could find. A set of Whitworth open ended or combination spanners from 1/8th up to 7/16th should fit most things on a bicycle, there should be something on Ebay.
 
Yeah, that really annoying seatpost bolt which won’t fit in a 13mm and is too small for a 14mm or 9/16”, is a 3/8 Whitworth.
 
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Fork blade light boss bolts are uniquely British and are 5/16" BSC, even if the rest of the bolts on the bike are metric. Hucksters sell plain steel ones for silly rare/vintage money in the cycling section on eBay, but hop over to the motorbike section and you can get stainless ones much cheaper, since they're found on a lot of Triumph motorbikes (I have no idea what they're used for on a Triumph). Metric spanners don't quite fit the head of these bolts - IIRC a 14mm is close, but you're better off digging out your AF sockets.

Of course, nearly all bikes, even new ones, have imperial threads for the BB shell, the fork column (if threaded) and the rear hub (if it's a fixie, singlespeed or has a multi-speed freewheel).
 
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Lamp bracket boss is 5/16 x 26 cycle thread same as standard front hub.
BSF spanner size.
Without checking is 5/16 BSF 24 tpi?

Keith
 
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