Among the many reasons our friends at Hagerty are a wonderful partner to the SCCA is that they love #FunWithCars just as much as we do — and they are a wealth of knowledge on a variety of car-related subjects. The article below originally appeared on Hagerty.com. For this and all of Hagerty Motorsports’s car-related content, visit their media site.
Cross thread, damaged thread, need a new thread? All three are encountered often enough when working on cars. Female threads are cut using taps and male threads with dies, both of which can be bought in sets or individually.
Threads come in all sorts, including metric, imperial and even some particular variants like UNF (Unified Fine) and UNC (Unified Coarse). Going stranger and rarer still are specific types like BSW (British Standard Whitworth), with nuts and bolts available only from specialist suppliers.
For that reason, having taps and dies on hand to fix problems or cut threads when you need to can be incredibly useful…