One solution would be to buy a thin-walled socket, but I found them to cost $20.00 or more and that seemed a little steep to me. So, as I stated at the end of another post, in a fit of rage I went to the nearest auto parts store and bought a cheap 11/16” deep socket and ground it down on my bench grinder till it fit. After all, I would only be out $5.00 if it didn’t work.
It’s not pretty, but it worked:
Up close:
As you can see it was pretty crude. And due to the out of roundness I thought at the time, it was sticking inside the well a bit. But, I didn’t want to grind on it anymore because it was starting to get pretty thin.
Well, the possibility of having a socket get stuck in the engine wasn’t sitting well with me so just before Christmas I picked up another socket. I took it to a friend who’s in charge of the Tool & Die Dept. where I work, along with my crude attempt & the BMW tool, and explained what I needed. In about 10 minutes he showed up in my cube with this “BMW Quality” version:
Up close:
Holding my crude version, He said: “You ground this down on a bench grinder?”
I said: “Yeah, why?
He said: “I measured it and it’s nearly perfectly round! You may have a second calling!”
There you have it, my simple low-cost solution to the Auto-Lite 4164 problem! Well, as long as your pretty good with a bench grinder, have a lathe, or a Tool & Die guy handy anyway.
