Interior hood latch bolts.

[slipshift]

I seem to have lost them. Does anyone know what size they are?

 

[scotts90ranger]

If I had to throw out a fairly educated guess I would say 6mm, I could check tomorrow night if no one else chimes in.

 

[slipshift]

If I had to throw out a fairly educated guess I would say 6mm, I could check tomorrow night if no one else chimes in.

Thanks, I bet you're right. 1/4-20 ( I can hope can't I) is just a little too big so I'm getting the 6mm bolts tomorrow. Thank you for your quick reply.

 

[BobSacamano]

I know it takes a 7 mm socket
to remove them

 

[JoshT]

I know it takes a 7 mm socket
to remove them

Good info. I need to replace my cable sometime this week, and probably would have tried half the sockets in drawer before I landed on a 7mm.

 

[scotts90ranger]

yeah, Ford's annoying with that but it's convenient that most of the dash has 7mm hex...

I'll double check here shortly, it's either 6mm or like a #10 sheet metal screw...

 

[scotts90ranger]

Ok, I was wrong on all accounts... I checked on my mountaineer that's torn apart and they're #8 sheet metal screws (verified with thread pitch and diameter to some #8 sheet metal screws I keep in stock), if you have to buy some get 3/4"... Apparently that's one of the parts that has loose enough tolerances and not structural enough to be 6mm...

 

[Roert42]

@JoshT

Ford doesn’t always use Din Standard because of space constraints and the need for specialty bolts. However they use Din for a lot of their metric hardware, at least on these older vehicles.

M4 = 7mm head, M5 = 8mm head, M6 = 10mm head, M8 = 13mm head, M10 = 17mm head, M12 = 19mm head.

Those are normally my go toos before I start trying the in between sizes.

There are other standards for metric bolt head sizing too. JIS (Japanese standard) and Din (German standard) are both older standards, and a lot of things are now following ISO standards which is an international organization.

For smaller bolts, up to M8, the sizes are the same, but the larger ones are here you start to see slight variations. M10 = 16mm and m12 = 18mm hex.


TLDR; if the bolt is small I always grab a 7 and 8 first. If that doesn’t work I get confused and start trying random standard sizes. Then eventually I realize it was and M3 and end up with a 5.5mm socket.