Fasteners for aftermarket parts

Anyone else bothered that aftermarket accessories almost universally use SAE fasteners? The whole damn truck is metric and they expect me to add SAE tools to my kit in case I need to mess with an aftermarket part for some reason. Particularly egregious is the Genesis dual battery kit. They re-use some factory parts, and add their own SAE parts. Now all of a sudden you need two metric sizes and one SAE size just to mess with your batteries. Why? FFS, just use metric fasteners!

 

I have been known to go out of my way to buy metric fasteners when installing things on my truck... I feel your pain

 

I go to my local ACE Hardware to get metric fasteners. Mine has a whoop ass selection. Puts Lowes and Home Depot's selection to shame.

 

Ace is the only hardware store (and occasionally small local mom and pop places) that carry any respectable fastener selection. For how big Lowes and Home Depot it's amazing they only dedicate a toolbox size area to all their nuts and bolts.

Unless I need something immediately though, I usually do McMaster and get 5-100x as many bolts as just one from Ace and i still get it within 12-24hr where I live.

 

The ACE folks know me by name too which is a plus!

 

Several metric sizes have SAE equivalents.
11mm = 7/16"
13mm = 1/2"
14mm = 9/16"
16mm = 5/8"
19mm = 3/4"
22mm = 7/8"
25mm = 1"

 

If their part isn't threaded and it's a nut and bolt situation for sure I always swap it out for metric. Gets kind of spendy for an already expensive part, though. Just frustrating.

I pretty much always go to Fastenal. Their prices are reasonable and all the fasteners are traceable to a standard.

 

Fastenal is great but they've closed several stores in my area.

 

We’ve got a local set of Ace hardware stores called Parkrose Hardware - their selection of fasteners is just short of amazing... I’m in there at least once a week. If I can’t find it there, then I’ll hit a local bolt supplier similar to Fastenal but they are a small shop with two stores.

I’ve also accumulated a decent set of taps and dies in metric, so depending on the part I will sometimes drill them out and tap to the next bigger metric threads.

 

Is this true? It always seems to me there is a small difference in size. A big enough difference to strip a bolt

 

https://tengtoolsusa.com/blogs/news/sae-to-metric-conversion-chart

 

There is for the most part. 19mm / 3/4" is exact, though and 7/8" / 22mm is really really close.