Freddy Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 It is my intention to overhaul and respray the body work on my new 20 year old landrover defender. I need some help. Many of the panels are riveted together, when I rebuild the body I am considering replacing the rivets with either stainless steel set screws, aluminium set screws or nylon set screws. Does any one have any experience of this, thoughts on what problems I may encounter, or words of caution. If I decide to use rivets in the body rebuild, is there a special riveting tool and rivets. The existing ones seem somewhat different to rivets I have used elsewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happyoldgit Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 Welcome to the forum. My advice would be to replace like for like, you really do not want to use stainless steel set screws on aluminium and I doubt that nylon fixings would have the required strength. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muscat Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 It is my intention to overhaul and respray the body work on my new 20 year old landrover defender. I need some help. Many of the panels are riveted together, when I rebuild the body I am considering replacing the rivets with either stainless steel set screws, aluminium set screws or nylon set screws. Does any one have any experience of this, thoughts on what problems I may encounter, or words of caution. If I decide to use rivets in the body rebuild, is there a special riveting tool and rivets. The existing ones seem somewhat different to rivets I have used elsewhere. Are you replacing the rivets because they are loose/missing or are you fitting new panels? I have just cut down a 110 reartub to fit a 90. Side and rear 1/4 panels are being replaced. Apart from rivets, there are a hell of a lot of spot welds in there as well. Set screws- I would hesitate to use set screws: I doubt that the clamping forces would be any where equal to rivets. Sooner or later, the screws will begin to loosen through vibration and the panels will begin fretting. I definitely would not use SS unless you take precautions to separate the two metals or the al al will soon begin to show signs of oxidisation. I am replacing all spot welds and rivets with CherryMax rivets. These are used on aircraft, are vibration resistant, and the mandrel is sealed in the head. These and most other blind rivets can be fitted using air powered tools, lazy-tongs, or rivet pliers. I am using lazy tongs as using rivet pliers causes serious hand fatigue by about rivet number 50! If you use lazy tongs, take care not to let the head slip and damage your panels/paint work. You could, of course, use the original type aluminium rivets as used by LR in manufacture. I am probably using overkill with CherryMax, but I only intend to do this job once! HTH Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NicTheOrange90 Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 I agree with Steve, rivets are standard pop rivets that are available in either steel or ally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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