I have a well used older USA made Craftsman socket set and the only one that's never ever been used is 25/32. Any car manufacturers ever used this size?
Ive wondered that myself a few times. I have some old box wrenches and couple sockets with weird fractions like that- that I've never used. I figured on the box end wrenches it was to keep even number of ends ! Lol
I worked for a machine tool company that made the majority of gear manufacturing machines for the aircraft, marine, and automobile manufacturing companies. The inserted blades of the cutter heads on the gear cutting machines were attached with priority hex-head bolts which were torqued using 25/32" sockets. I still have one, which I have never used outside of my working days. The newer heads, to my understanding (been retired for 20-years) use a different attachment bolt, no longer 25/32", so I imagine a lot of those old sockets are rattling around, unused in tool boxes.
I had to search out a 25/32 socket some years ago to fix a regulator on my welding set. An adjustable wouldn't do, no metric was close enough. In really early days of car manufacturing these 32nd sizes were standard, and the tool makers kept them on for way past their expiry date.
Those weird socket sizes are for working on British cars. Whitworth, British Standard Brass, British Standard Cycle.... more threads than an Egyptian cotton sheet. You know its not the right socket. You know you shouldn't do it. You feel guilty and a little dirty afterwards, but it turns the nut without rounding off the flats "they ain’t metric, they ain’t inches, you never can find a wrench to work on them” - Mater. Cheers, Harv
Here I always figured that they were the 99th piece in a 99 piece tool set. There were some surplus ones in a drawer in the store room of the high school auto shop I taught in for 13 years. They were still there when I left when the school closed the program and no doubt got sold when someone bid on the whole cabinet they were in when the district auctioned off all the stuff in the shop.
My dad had some oddball 32nds as well, he used them when working at Van Pelts putting fire trucks together in the 60’s.
The tool boxes issued while I was in the Army in the mid sixties had some of those odd sockets too so they must have been used on "something"
There are at least Two 32s sockets in one of my Gramps’ old sets. One set doesn’t even have a ratchet included as it uses what looks like a big L shaped Allen wrench for a handle.
Some Lincoln rod bolts in the 60's also used 19/32. I checked a lose rod on a 68 Lincoln and it was the only time I used the 19/32 socket.
yup some way back some ford fasteners took them sizes.....somewhere I got a open end with oddball fractions that some one even stamped ford on. Hmmm......that probably ain't a real sentence.......So, anyway they got a place in automotive antiquity. Kind of like about everything else here, myself included.
My dad worked in the "Ford Garage" (dealership) in Sioux Falls in the late 30's. He told me the /32's fasteners was one of Henry's ideas to force everyone to have their cars worked on by the Ford dealers as they would be the only ones with the right size tools. Said it didn't work... in less than a year you could get the sockets and wrenches at any dime store. Nice try though Henry.
Seems every time I try to look for a big deep socket, I grab that one. I'm going out to the garage and label that one with tape so that it Don't happen again. Can't just throw it out because I might eventually find out what it fits. Sent from my SM-T350 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
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