Metric to AWG Conversion Chart
Fat Freddy wrote:
> I asked this question years ago, and have forgotten where I wrote the answer. What is the correlation in wire size between those used in the Bentley wiring diagrams and what I'm used to at the local hardware store? The wiring diagrams show sizes of 0.5, 0.75, 1.0. 1.5, 2.5, 4.0, and 6.0. Can anyone translate into USA "guage," like 10g, 16g, etc?
Larry,
I looked at my Bentley manuals and the numbers that they use are cross sectional area of the wire in square millimeters. To convert those numbers into square inches divide the german number by 645.16 and the closest AWG wire that is larger will work. I put together a list of mm^2 values, converted them to sq-in and then found the closest AWG that matched it. Hopefully I didn't mess up any numbers in the table below.
mm^2 |
sq in |
AWG |
sq in |
0.50 |
0.0008 |
20 |
0.0008 |
0.85 |
0.0013 |
18 |
0.0013 |
1.00 |
0.0016 |
16 |
0.0020 |
1.50 |
0.0023 |
|
|
2.00 |
0.0031 |
14 |
0.0032 |
2.50 |
0.0039 |
|
|
3.00 |
0.0047 |
12 |
0.0051 |
4.00 |
0.0062 |
|
|
5.00 |
0.0078 |
10 |
0.0081 |
6.00 |
0.0093 |
|
|
8.00 |
0.0124 |
8 |
0.0130 |
10.00 |
0.0155 |
|
|
17.00 |
0.0264 |
6 |
0.0270 |
26.00 |
0.0403 |
4 |
0.0420 |
34.00 |
0.0527 |
3 |
0.0530 |
43.00 |
0.0667 |
2 |
0.0670 |
56.00 |
0.0868 |
1 |
0.0870 |
70.00 |
0.1085 |
0 |
0.1090 |
88.00 |
0.1364 |
00 |
0.1370 |
BTW, the mm^2 numbers that I had from the Bentley manual are 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5, 2.5, 4.0, 6.0 and 25.0. I do not know if the other mm^2 numbers are actual wires that you can get, but they are close approximations to the AWG wires. For instance, if you have a 25.0 Battery cable, that is close to 26.0 which crosses to 4 AWG. Also, there are some gaps in the AWG, just substitute the next larger AWG wire. 1.5 does not have a direct cross and a 14 AWG would work fine for that application.