3rd party vendors including standard hardware instead of metric

95% of all aftermarket goodies on my truck are held in place by M8 bolts. M8 bolts can be found at any hardware stock, or cheaper and in larger amounts on Amazon. I have tons of them in the garage and in a ziplock in the truck. No "what if" problems what so ever.

 

The M8s are pretty common, true. Just harder to find in a hardened grade like 10.9, as opposed to the 9 drawers of imperial grade 8 at my local Lowes.

 

Respectfully, ordering from an industrial supply house isn’t ‘easily available.’ I said somewhat difficult meaning they don’t stock much of it at home improvement or hardware stores. With some searching one can get just about anything delivered but shipping costs would be 3 times the order subtotal.

The other difficulty is most automotive hardware is semi custom shouldered bolts that are hardly ubiquitous. I’m curious to see if in my lifetime the metric section in the bolt aisle at Home Depot grows to even half the area of the fractional section.

 

Not a chance. Most of the US home improvement market is imperial, and most of the cheaper stuff that uses metric, I see people just tossing and getting a new one. Disposable consumerism at its finest.