CliftonGK1

Calipers are your friend. You don't need to drop the big bucks on a pair of Mitutoyos; a $15 digital metric caliper from Harbor Freight works fine.

What part are you measuring? At 1 1/16" (27mm), I'm just making a wild guess that's not a hub cone, which makes me question why you want a cone wrench.

Maybe someone else can venture a guess on this one? The only thing that comes to mind where you'd need a flat wrench near that size would be for a 1" threaded headset, but I don't recall a 27mm headset wrench (only 30mm and 32mm).

LarDasse74

This is a dangerous and stupid claim that could lead to skinned knuckes, stripped and/or improperly tightened fasteners.. I hope this was a long long long time ago (like before Japanese cars starting taking market share from American manufacturers). You say you 'had' these friends... perhaps you were just helping them out while they trained for the special olympics?

Any shop that is actually paid to work on cars with metric fasteners had goddam better have a proper set of metric wrenches. This is not an unrealistic expectation, as metric wrenches are not a rare or exotic item.

LarDasse74

Perhaps it is flats on a old bottom bracket cup? Or wrench flats on some other tool like a Shimano BB spline tool? It is certainly not a common size on modern bicycles.

peebee

You don't even need to do that (which would require remembering there's 25.4mm in an inch).

You can just type "convert 11/16 inch to mm" into Google and it will give you the result.

Asi

I feel somehow relived of the pressure of the imperial units. I feel metric is more normal, they all multiply by ten to form all the domain of measure from micrometers (from attometers trough fentometers, picometers, nanometers) to mm, cm, dm, m, dam, hm, and kilometers (it can go further to mega, giga, tera, peta and exa, but for that sorts of distances it's more the use of light years, or parsecs). And those prefixes work for other units also.

SI rules! https://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/chemi...ral/si_en.html
And all formulas and theorems are postulated in SI units, not in imperial ones.

There are small exceptions like the use of Celsius degrees instead of Kelvin, but it's an easy transformation (similar from Fahrenheit to Rankine), but I doubt I would ever see weather forecast in Kelvin or Rankine

Imperial units (inch, foot, yard, mile, pound, grain, nautical mile, US gallon, UK gallon, horsepower (746W), horsepower(735W), steam horsepower and other variations that confuse between hp-s and miles, and others) are a bit ambiguous for me and instantly convert to metric to "weight" the magnitude of that number
Yet there are weirder systems of measurements like traditional Chinese units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese...of_measurement, or Japanese, or Turkish, or others (each and every country must have had at some point their own units and standards).
Fortunately nowadays there are only two left with some variations (metric and imperial), and it's already declared that metric is the way to go (in the scientific world, and adopted as SI units) but discrepancies still occur, the most obvious being in length, weight and temperature and their derivative like pressure

I feel it's only a matter of time to stick to one set of units. But that time will be long past my lifetime.

As for the original problem.. just use a crescent wrench. It should get the job done, or even a "french wrench" https://image.shutterstock.com/displa...d-17505082.jpg

bjtesch

This was a real long time ago, like when nobody knew what Japanese cars were.

I didn't say that I endorsed what they were doing, it never worked out for me when I tried it. The biggest problem was when American cars had mixed fasteners- some parts were SAE and some were metric. You would have to take a guess which it was, then what size it was and pull out a couple of wrenches. When neither of them fit well you would have to go to your other box of wrenches and pull out a couple and try them. With SAE fasteners you could usually guess the right size the first time.

mike_s

In the US, that might be called an ambidextrous monkey wrench. (That style wrench, with only one set of jaws, is called a "monkey wrench" here. It is an old mechanic's joke to send a new guy in search of a "left-handed monkey wrench")

Asi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_spanner - In Europe It's called French key and in my language translated is also french key (key/wrench/spanner have one word in my language), but it's nice to know other opinions in other places.

Monkey wrench is a bit too flexible with a lot of joints and can be out of square on the bolt, a French key is almost like a hand held vise

cny-bikeman

This thread is getting a bit silly, and I might point out that the OP asked about a cone wrench, which would leave out any kind of adjustable wrench. On the other hand I'm curious about what could need that thin a wrench on that large a size.

HillRider

There is no question the metric system is more "rational" but several attempts to change the USA to it have failed and are likely to in the near future. We are gradually accepting metric items. Even "American" cars use metric fasteners almost exclusively and some products like soft drinks, wine and liquor are sold in liter and ml designated containers but metric units are still the exception, not the rule.

Even the UK, which is "officially" metric, hasn't gotten away from the English system entirely. When I was last in England a few years ago road sign distances were still in miles, speedlimits were still posted in miles/hour and petrol stations posted their fuel prices in both liters and (Imperial) gallons. Strangely, at the same time, the BBC was reporting that a grocer had been fined for selling his produce by the pound, not the Kilo. Go figure.

BCRider

Canada is officially metric as well. But it's still common to see bulk products with the $/lb written on the tag in bigger numbers with $/Kg or $/100gms written under it.

It's us old codgers messing up the system though. I've talked with school kids on up to 20 somethings that are totally OK with and talk metric exclusively. And when it comes to mechanic'ing I'm fine with metric on all counts. Heck, I'd even love to switch to all metric for my model airplanes but the sheets of balsa we get here are in imperial sizes because they come from the US. Makes conversion a mess where small amounts count.

Same with metal working. Far too much we have up here comes from the US and it's all imperial. So I figure I'm stuck with it and gave up fighting the battle.

Random Tandem

Last week I found myself working on a 1940 CCM that has axle nuts that are 5/8" on the front and 11/16" on the rear. None of my metric wrenches fit well and I know what happens to lug nuts if I regularly use an adjustable wrench (I end up moving to the vice grips, as they get rounded over). Anyway, just wanted to post my solution to this type of historic conundrum - the ReStore. For $.25 I found a combination wrench with 5/8" at one end and 11/16" on the other (which now lives strapped under the saddle of this old machine), it just took me 15 minutes pawing through three small wood boxes of old wrenches. If I needed an oddball cone wrench, I think I would be grinding one of these old wrenches down until it fit my needs, for $1, I can buy 3 spares.

-Will

wheelreason

I feel it too...

italktocats

uk metric? now thats funny

fietsbob

OP should ask the bike shop to order such things for them,
rather than expect them to be both clairvoyant, knowing your mind in advance,
and so well endowed financially to have a huge inventory
in an era where so much sales is lost to online shopping.

Jon T

1 mm equals .03937". Do the simple math.
Jon

Papa Tom

fujiyama-

For what it's worth, I totally understand why you chose to post your question here, rather than just Google it.

Some of us come from a time when people used a question like yours as an excuse to strike up a conversation and maybe make some new friends. The answer didn't really matter all that much, but the interaction was priceless. We weren't "better" back then, just different.

I still post dumb stuff on these forums all the time just to encourage interaction. I know that's not my job, but it's a mission I am on - and hell knows the world can use some civil chatter right now.

Anyway, I say buy the 11/16 wrench. Every time I try to "cheat" the way you are trying to, I end up regretting it.

grayEZrider

Do yourself a favor. Even a cheap TRAC phone can download a free app "unit converters". All measurement conversions you'll need, quick, simple, easy and always handy. .

droppedandlost 

I hope he's got it sorted by now. 8 years later....

Papa Tom

Good catch, DroppedandLost.

When BF changed its format a few months back, an important bit of information - the date of the original post - disappeared from the post listings page. I asked the administrators if it was coming back and they said they were "working on it," but I haven't seen any sign of it.

If any of the administrators are watching this thread, please consider restoring this very helpful feature! As you can see, forum users (including myself) don't automatically check the date on the first post after opening.

Hoopdriver

The OP may not be around anymore but for anyone else that may be interested, there is a small, elegant, and free application for called Convert developed by Josh Madison. It converts pretty much everything to any other appropriate measure. I keep a shortcut on my Windows taskbar and use it many times in a typical week. Developed for Windows but also works with Wine under linux.

You can get it at: https://joshmadison.com/convert-for-windows/

cny-bikeman

Well, as long at the zombie thread has gone astray anyway anyway, one could just Google the original question. Even simpler, if one merely types in 11/16 in, Google will display options for conversion to decimal or mm. One can also type in one measurement and the desired conversion, such as 3.5 qt liter, 125mi km. No app needed at all.

Kimmo 

Does anyone know of an Android app that can tell you which imperial spanner to grab when your vernier spits out say, 15.91mm/0.626"?

Needs fuzzy logic to account for more precision than accuracy.

I would prefer a vernier that can just tell me inches in fractions; the fuzzy logic wouldn't be necessary since a little nudge would get me from 81/128" to 5/8".

ETA - never mind, fractional verniers are totally a thing.

AnkleWork

Apps to avoid arithmetic. Next up: a hydraulic press to drive a nail.

mitchmellow62

They skipped hydraulic and went pneumatic. Called a nailer or nail gun, lol.