Arab treadle roller stay

I’ve measured the bolt for you.

3/4” length (including head), 1/2” length (excluding head)
Diameter of unthreaded part is 5/24” which is 0.208”.

I also attach a photograph if it’s any help.

Arab_roller_stay_bolt.jpg

Thanks Phil - difficult measuring something you haven’t got!
I can work with this - appreciated!

Ken

I would be wary of trying to force a metric in – you may end up damaging the internal thread.

I was missing a frisket arm bolt so I found a local small works engineering bloke to make one for me rather than try to roughly match it with metric. It cost me £25 or so, but he made it exactly like the other one!

A good independent hardware shop might also have imperial screws and bolts. It’s a long shot because my engineer man said that they used to just make them in the works and sometimes not to a standard.

It is an almost racing certainty that the Arab ex factory would have involved imperial threads! Anything else would have been later adaptations, force of circumstances/breakages etc. Normally machines, Printing and others would be equipped with many bolts throughout at different lengths but with the same thread, suggest without endangering the safety of the machine or the operator, temporarily “borrow” one and ascertain the correct thread and size, fortunately here we have a brilliant specialist hardware store, (Namrick Nut and Bolt store www listed) with the same problem, we would present a pattern (borrowed) as above, they would use a universal thread pitch guage on the pattern and within 15 seconds offer possibly 5-6 options/possibilities. Obviously you may not have this facility in your neighbourhood, but virtually verthing out of DETROIT in the last 3/4 of a century would have used imperial threads, your local Garage/Auto repair shop shoud/will have threading charts/pitch guages and /or bins of spare negotiable bolts. The size pictured looks remarkably like, size and dimension for bolting the transmission casing to the engine block or the differential casing to the axle? GUESS timate, not fact. One more little thought, as you seem to be well blessed with, Dragster, Hot Rod, Funny Car, Beautiful street legal machines etc around every corner, could one of your “good ole boys” give you some good help and advice,….in exchange, perhaps print in 2 or more colours and kiss cut, some nice roundells/stickers for the windshield of his/her motor for the cruise down the strip Saturday night, to show of his/her retro Ford pick up with the Big Block Chevvy engine on display. Might even be able to get X Y Z,s Print Shop sticker on the fender for the National Finals, cost to coast publicity, HOW about That. And YES I do rate The Eagles Winslow Arizona and the Girl in Her flat bed Ford etc terrific.Thanks.

Hi both - obviously I only have the hole to look at, but I do have a concern that it may have been ‘metricfied’ or worse ‘quasi-metricfied’ with some brute force at some point, so am proceeding very gingerly!

Phil - is your bar flat or slightly curved?

Thanks as ever

Hi Ken. Mine is flat — couple more photos if they are any help!

DSC_0443.jpg

DSC_0442.jpg

Hi Phil - thanks very much for this.
Looking at your pictures the rollers seem to have a bigger gap between them than on mine, and the mark for the bar (on mine) indicates it would not go over the roller stock runners.
Could you confirm the width of the bar (3/8” or 1/2”?), and that rollers and saddles are the same size as on mine (1 3/4” and 3” respec.), just to make sure they didn’t change the design?
Really really appreciated!

No problem.

Width of the bar is 7/16”
Saddles are 3”

I have a feeling that my rollers aren’t the standard and are a little narrower. My runners and rollers are 1.5” in diameter. But I have found a couple of larger runners in a box which are closer to 1.75”. Only 2 of them though – another job for the metalworker when I need the rollers re-covering!

Thanks Phil, very much.