BOND D week 5

[richard]

Did you replace your floor Malcom? Well mine has quite a few holes , some largish , now and punching out a rivet brings a half inch hole

[plas man]

rain stopped play for the photo's !

(a coat of hammerite on the flexitors should tidy them up !!!  )

[richard]

If this rain keeps up , we will probably all be strapping wood under our cars to keep them afloat  bringing two threads together 

[AndyL]

Aluminium+steel+moisture= battery.

All the parts that have given me most grief on my Isetta to date have been aluminium on steel.

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

I did replace it on mine, but I have seen others where plates have been added to fill the holes - either riveted in or welded. Like rusty holes in steel, it's a question of getting rid of the badly corroded bits and working back till you come to sound material. Mine simply didn't have enough sound material left.

[richard]

Thanks did you do the job as per Bond tips or by drilling out all 200 odd rivets ?

[plas man]

nice and sunny , had the top down and went of on a imaginative  stationary tour over the N Yorks moors (never left the back street  )

 some photos of the hood down , the frame sits on top of itself , and my frame is wing nut to the bracket on the car for easy removal - (the cotton/string stops the rattle !) , the male bracket on the windscreen frame , the hood fastening nut , also don't forget to have good overlap at windscreen or you'll get wet  ...

[plas man]

the pipe lagging on the frame stops it chattering on the bodywork beading ,

[richard]

Thank you again , wing nuts to frame good idea . Need to buy wing bolts too . I am still puzzling over how much rail there is going backwards from the front rail and is it part of that front rail , and do the frame hoop rails sit exactly on top of each other when folded down or is one within the curve of the other and if so which . Answers on a postcard cheers rich love the window stickers by the way

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

I like that wing nuts idea plas man, so simple, but I've not seen it on any other cars.

To answer Richard about the floor, I'd forgotten about that alternative in Bond tips, I drilled out the 200 odd rivets (or at least the ones that were left) and put in a new floor and a new foot board/scuttle. The original floor had lots of holes from electrolytic reaction, and had a split on the drivers side between the floor and the side which had been crudely repaired with plates bolted on with steel 8BA nuts and bolts and a few pop rivets all of which had then added more holes and damage from electrolytic reaction. Where the two steel cross members had disintegrated (the family has a second lateral cross member behind the flexitors), they'd been replaced by a bit of c section aluminium that was very strong, but weighed about a ton and this had gradually torn along some of the holes where the steel was originally bolted to the floor. The scuttle had split along the fold where it drops down from the horizontal when one of the supporting bulkhead angles had broken away from the bulkhead and never been fixed.

[richard]

All a great help thanks both , these type of old cars are a very different prospect from an off the shelf Isetta , Messerschmitt etc. aren't they  very DIY

[richard]

hope i did the right thing but they look like the job , do you just bash em with a hammer ? this seller also has 1,500 odd items for sale many of them very old stock nails ,screws even many sizes in imperial grub screws - there must be a use for these somewhere

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260854067856?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT#ht_954wt_1037

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

Hopefully you picked alloy rivets, not the steel ones in the link! You really need two people for cold riveting unless you've got very long arms or can put an immovable object under the head of a flat head rivet (not always very practical and the ones you're replacing are probably round head rivets).  You need the right size rivet set, or for round head rivets, a rivet snap and set.
e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rivet-Set-Up-3-16-Tinmen-s-Setup-Octagon-Steel-Sheffield-Made-/251930115993?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Snap-punch-tool-3-16-dia-for-Solid-Rivets-Priory-103A-3-16-Single-LandRover-/321205802134?

The hole also needs to be precisely the right size for the rivet and the rivet needs to be the right length for the job, with just the right clinch allowance. I found getting the right diameter rivets at a reasonable price usually meant buying large quantities of long rivets and then cutting them down to the right length.

This is a good basic guide to the process.
http://www.technologystudent.com/joints/rivet2.htm

You can see why people use pop rivets!

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

I'd recommend getting a comfy pair of ear defenders as well!

Here's a chart of suggested clinch allowance. If the rivet is too long, it's irritatingly easy to bend the shaft without getting the material properly clinched together, if its too short, you don't have enough material to form a proper head on the plain end to hold the material in place.

http://www.hansonrivet.com/commercial-solid-rivets.htm

Once you and your assistant have done the first 50 or so, it's easy.

[richard]

Ah don't get riveting the aluminium floor , for which pop rivets are surely the only practical solution , with the 8 steel rivets that I needed to make up the roof rails . Have just looked at all that interesting info with flat headed steel rivets it would be very different though . Interesting to use a piece of paper between the components when riveting if a moveable joint is required , as in the folding roof hmmm thanks . Now how do you do flat head steel ones  there must be a bit on them