Thread: Spanners

Hi Guys,
Sorry I realise this may sound dumb to most of you. but what spanners do I require for a series 1. I think its whitworths, would someone be kind enough to confirm or correct my assumption please.
Regards, Wayne

Confirming the above. Most of the bolts and nuts on Series 1 are Whitworth or BSF. The same spanners work with both, but note that these both have the spanner labelled with the bolt size not the spanner opening size, and these are different for BSF and BSW, with BSF using the next smaller spanner size for the same bolt size. Even more confusingly, most of the Whitworth (BSW) boltheads and nuts on the Series 1 will use the BSF spanner size.

There are a few places AF spanners are used on Series 1 (e.g. wheel bearing nuts), and small electrical and some body bolts and nuts are BA, which has some spanner sizes not covered in standard BSW spanners.

A more important concern is that many parts on the Series 1 are interchangeable with Series 2/3 parts (for example almost the entire drive train) and these use AF spanners. And some parts, for example tie rod ends, plus virtually any bolt+nut in the vehicle may have been swapped for metric sizes. So to work on a Series 1, you really need to have Whitworth, AF (American) and metric spanners - and make sure you use the right one on every bolt and nut - badly fitting spanners too often mean replacing bits and can also lead to skinned knuckles.

John