Metric etc

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

Actually your wheels and tires are fully metric. The stock tire for the 164 
was actually a 195/65 x 381, NOT 15 inches as commonly supposed.

BTW, Canadians still buy flooring by the square yard, butter by the pound 
(454 grams you know), plywood by the 4x8 sheet (1219x2438 approximately, 
well to the nearest half a millimetre), and so on. We persist in converting 
fuel economy to mpg for comparison purposes, heck some people even do 
km/litre which is quite bizarre as fuel consumption is more logically 
expressed metrically as litres per 100 km.

And, I understand that Europeans buy meat and butter by the pound (half 
kilo), drink beer in litres (near enough to a quart, the difference won't 
bother you) and so on. A metre is close to a yard, and 13 mm is still half 
an inch, everywhere. Metric is not actually much easier to use or remember, 
or to use, than the curious jumble of units I grew up with. E g I have a 
choice of metric or "Imperial" when woodworking, and use Imperial because a 
64 of an inch is just as easy to use as any number of millimetres. For 
machining a "thou" is just as convenient as any subdivision of metric size.

The most ironic confusion surrounds a long ton, short ton, and tonne. Long 
tons are 2,240 pounds each, short tons (used in the USA) are "metric" in 
that they are 2,000 pounds. A true Metric Tonne is 1,000 kg or 2,200 
pounds, point is heavy materials are measured in big units of approximately 
the same amount , and smaller items are also measured in convenient units 
of approximately the same amount, all around the world. The supposed 
"inherent" advantages of the metric system are not that at all, it's just 
as arbitrary and jumbled as any other system in common use. BUT converting, 
now that's where the excitement starts.


Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
91 Alfa 164L, White, original owner

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