Petrol tank sender fixings

[Ken]

In anticipation of the arrival of my new fuel tank I bought some 3ba  fixings as listed in the parts book.
The tank has 4mm threaded holes. Why for heaven sake, ba taps and dies are easily available and it's not as if the fixing ring is a carry over from somewhere else, it's made specifically for the Land Rover tank. Simple to do it correctly, sloppy to bung in metric and a not good enough to fail to mention in the description of the part that is has non standard threaded holes.
Sorry to moan but it goes against the grain of my engineering training.

[Alchad]

It's been a common complaint on here for years. Simple answer is that the replacements were almost certainly originally reversed engineered in China and someone did a measurement of the holes and specified the nearest metric equivalent. I doubt imperial threads featured on the syllabus of a lot of Chinese tech schools.

[Ken]

I guess it depends on whether the manufacturer made the component and offered it to paddock to sell or whether paddock commissioned the manufacture. If the latter they get to specify the detail. Easy to stipulate ' make as factory drawing' The Chinese will make whatever you want.
I think I'm correct ( on the issue of simplifying rather than complicating fastenings ) that Massey Ferguson with the T20 supplied 2 spanners which did for every nut and bolt on the machine. Proper, thought through engineering.

[diffwhine]

Paddock probably buy those sort of things through parts wholesalers such as Hotbray or Britpart/Allmakes. The complaint needs to be escalated up the chain.

[Wittsend]

It'a all very odd.

In that the original 3BA screws are an odd size, at least on Land Rovers.
I don't know of another place on the vehicle where 3BA is used 

LR could just have easily specified 2BA which is a more "common: size. though in this metric age would probably just as easily be "converted" to metric 

Given the price of a decent tank the suppliers could just as easily add a little bag of screws and a cork gasket
I think punters would happily pay a fiver extra.

[Alan Drover]

Try Emberton Imperial. I bought a proper Series 3 sender unit recently from them. None of this ridiculous 2 piece set up.

[Ken]

I'd already bought and paid the higher price for an oem one.
I looked at the one on LROE site, it looked a good job but positive earth so no use for a D suffix 2A even if I was prepared to spend that much.
It's done now and was straightforward, I wire locked the 2 parts then soldered leaving the wire lock in place also. I was expecting that it would be awkward to figure out the length and orientation but the tank isn't baffled so neither was I.
I will take it up with Paddock, something that could be better. At the very least they could warn that the screws are metric but really it should be done correctly.

[Sunny Jim]

I bought a stainless steel tank a few years ago, and someone had felt-tipped 'M5' next to the holes. M5 didn't fit, neither did 3BA, and some M4s I had were loose! Eventually I found some stainless M4 pan heads that fitted the threads OK. Yes, it would be nice at the price of the thing to have a set of correct length M4 screws that were a good fit in the threads! I didn't want to try and re-thread the holes in case it went wrong and ruined the tank (not to mention getting any swarf out), and M5 were too big for the sender anyway. I got a new correct type sender from Cyprus, as the old one was very worn, and the thread on the tag was virtually non-existent.

Otherwise, it is a very nice tank.

Sunny Jim