Metric Conversions

BigNorm

Boobie Inspector
Joined
Apr 30, 2016
Messages
3,428
Location
Minden, NV, USA
Ride
2014 Rocket 3 Touring
I can only speak for myself but having grown up with conventional measurements the metric system is something hard for my to envision. For me a liter is something you get when I decide I need a bottle of soda in my fridge and usually it's a 2 liter bottle. Having a little spare time I figured out some conversions so a person such as myself can envision how big things are. A mm is real small. 25.4mm= 1 inch. An intake valve on my 2014 Touring is 1.49" rounded up. There are two intake valves per cylinder. That equates to almost a 3" intake valve. HOLE E SHYTE! That's huge! Now my stock valves only open about .33" but if you figure all that air coming in from the huge amount of intake valve we probably don't need all that much. Not to mention we can wrap our motors out to 7000-9000 rpm. That's alot of freakin' air!

Just out of curiosity does anyone know how much valve lift our motors can make without piston modification? How many choices do we have for cam shafts? Curiosity killed the cat but BigNorm's live forever.
 
I'm fortunate that at School all was imperial, but at the point of my first job NZ changed to metric.
So I learnt Imperial at School but have worked in Metric all my life.
This has been real good as for the past 25 odd years I've been building Exhaust Systems for the 70's Brit bikes which of coarse is all Imperial, but have been conversing with people all over the world in both MPH, yards etc, and KPH, millimeters etc.
In the work shop I'll make something 300mm long, with .001" clearance. :D
 
At School all was imperial, I joined the navy as an apprentice just after the country went metric.
So I learnt Imperial at School was required to machine in metric on imperial machines as well as machine in imperial when on ships that were imperial based. The trade exams in NSW were required to be only metric based.
To add interest I spent many years on ships built in The USA where the US system was used so conversions where many and varied where the UK and US systems differed.
Add in nautical measurements just to simplify it all.
So Sometimes I get confused and other times I get confused.
But as always if you give someone 24.5 mm they will take a mile ( be that US/Imperial or nautical).
 
I'll ask you a simple question @BigNorm , can you count money? If you can, then you can do metric. Everything is divisible by 10. When I taught men/women how to shoot grade in parking lot and highways, 1% grade equals 1 cent (centimeter) per meter (1 dollar),when grading downhill,you pay 1 cent.per dollar, on your grade rod,when you grade uphill, you take 1 cent per dollar. 2%,2 cents so on and so forth. That being said,we still mark with paint on the ground for our operator's in imperial,+1" or -1" and so on,but we know that 25mm,roughly equals 1",50 mm equals 2", it's just WAY EASIER to use metric in civil applications.
 
I can only speak for myself but having grown up with conventional measurements the metric system is something hard for my to envision. For me a liter is something you get when I decide I need a bottle of soda in my fridge and usually it's a 2 liter bottle. Having a little spare time I figured out some conversions so a person such as myself can envision how big things are. A mm is real small. 25.4mm= 1 inch. An intake valve on my 2014 Touring is 1.49" rounded up. There are two intake valves per cylinder. That equates to almost a 3" intake valve. HOLE E SHYTE! That's huge! Now my stock valves only open about .33" but if you figure all that air coming in from the huge amount of intake valve we probably don't need all that much. Not to mention we can wrap our motors out to 7000-9000 rpm. That's alot of freakin' air!

Just out of curiosity does anyone know how much valve lift our motors can make without piston modification? How many choices do we have for cam shafts? Curiosity killed the cat but BigNorm's live forever.

G'day Norm at the risk of been called a know all(not the first time) 2x 1.5 inch valves equals a surface area of 3.522 square inches nearly the area of a 2.5 inch valve ,but a 3inch valve has a surface area of 7.0686 square inches I only know this from years of mucking around with diesel engines and exhaust stacks ie a single 6inch exhaust stack is 4 times the area of twin 3inch stacks it's all due to the increased radius
 
i grew up within the changeover from her majesty's imperial to ze metric system, so am a complete mixed bag.
i can't relate to speed in kph though, or kW in engine power for that matter. it's all mph and bhp.
taking measurements, always in mm as it just seems so much easier and accurate. unless i'm describing something to someone, then it's back to feet and inches coz they're easier to imagine than cm and m for some reason..
 
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