When I was doing the radiator on The Precious I misplaced my 1/4 drive 6-point 10mm socket and the 6" extension it was on.
This is normally a complete disaster because this is the rarest of tools.
The reason it's rare is it's the one that grows legs and walks off.
Notice I did not say that I misplaced one of my 10mm sockets...
10mm sockets are famous for disappearing.
Fudge.
I know I have a 1/4 drive deepwell in the bin, so I start digging. No socket there. But before I go looking in the other toolkit for it, I realize that the deepwell will need a 3" extension for when I find it.
Then the miracle occurs.
In the section of my bin dedicated to debris and extensions, bathed in a Holy light accompanied by the songs of Angels, there is a Craftsman 1/4 drive 6-point 10mm socket! Long thought lost, if indeed it had ever existed, by scholars.
Even better, with the Craftsman in hand, the Divine Light shone upon the missing Ichiban brand 10mm on the extension that'd been misplaced right where I'd left it.
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Wait, are you telling me that you found two different 10mm sockets?
ReplyDeleteThat's.... unpossible!
That's how the system works. You lose the 10mil sockets, run out and buy more, then the "lost" ones re-appear.
ReplyDeleteAs to crowfoot wrenches, those are a whole other twilight zone away. I lost a 13MM crowfoot inside the engine bay of a Mercedes 300D and NEVER found it. Wherever it lodged, it did so with finality. The guy that bought the car (and shipped it to Poland) is going to be the one who finds it when it jams some critical moving part, I am positive about that.
Normally buying the replacement causes the original to remanifest. 10mm is the exception.
DeleteWhen they evaporate they are never seen again.
"We should be fuckin' dead now, my friend! We just witnessed a miracle, and I want you to fucking acknowledge it!"
Sounds right, the only sockets I've lost are 10mm, although I make a point of having several on hand which seems to help. As an aside you can get a sense of what metric stuff somebody works on by what wrenches they have duplicates of. My wrench drawer has multiple 10mm, 13mm and 15mm because I work on German cars, Ford cars and bicycles. If I worked on Japanese or GM cars I'd have extra 12mm and 14mm for JIS fasteners.
ReplyDeleteI think all the extra 10mm sockets must end up in my toolbox. And I'm the guy who barely has any metric stuff. :-/
ReplyDeleteI have three Chevys and they're pretty much all metric for the fastener heads. Inch threads metric heads on lots of places on The Biscayne.
DeleteMy C3 is almost all inch pattern, the C4 has some metric heads but lots of inch. Of course your Biscayne is several years newer than my C4 and more than a decade newer than my C3. The Chevelles I used to have didn't have any metric in them at all. The Silverado is new enough it hasn't had to have a lot of wrenching done on it, and mostly what it has need hasn't been something I had the time or inclination to do myself.
ReplyDeleteBut I've thought that places like Harbor Freight should sell 10mm sockets in 10 packs. But thinking about it, it may be more profitable to sell people a whole nother full set of sockets instead.