Military Vehicles, November 1996,: Re: Rivets?

Re: Rivets?

Todd Paisley (paisley@erols.com)
Sun, 24 Nov 1996 12:23:21 -0500

>Help? I'm currently restoring a '43 MB which is my first mv
>restoration project. As part of the chassis restoration, I ground
>off the rivets to remove the front bumper gussets and the rear
>frame cross-member which were badly mangled beyond repair. I've
>aquired the new gussets and cross-member, but do not know where
>to acquire rivets and how to install them. I pondered using
>carraige bolts, but would like to stick to original. Any suggestions
>would be greatly appreciated. My local parts supplier was clueless
>on how to go about doing this. Thanks. MROG777@aol.com

I am restoring a '41 MB right now and just got finished doing this.
The rear cross member is fairly simple to do. (Errrr.. Simple if
you have the body off the frame and just have a bare frame!) I
bought a bucking bar from a place in New York that sells rivots.
What I did was clamp the rivot with a piece of steel. Then heat
the rivot with a torch until it is glowing that take the bucking
bar and hit it with a large hammer until the shape is right. Don't
heat it too much or the cross member will distort. On the gussets,
I could not figure out how to get behind the inner frame horn
C-channel. so what I did was trim all the bad metal from the old
gusset. I took a repro gusset (which turns out to be not exactly
the same shape as the original so it had to be cut and reshaped)
and traced where the old gusset metal that still remained. I cut
the new gusset and welded it to what was left of the old one.
With lots of grinding and welding to fill, I now have an original
looking gusset with the original rivots still intact.

Todd Paisley

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'41 Willys MB "slat-grille" (restoration in progress
'42 Ford GPW "script" (very rough)
'44 CJ2 Agri-Jeep (#12 of 12 prototypes built for testing
whether Jeeps had a civilian use!)
'45 CJ2A (68th CJ ever built!) (Just a pile of parts...)
'46 CJ2A (early column shift)
'46 CJ2A (late)
'47 CJ2A (Farm Jeep with 3-point Monroe hydraulic implement lift)
'48 CJ2A (trencher)
'64 CJ5A (Tuxedo Park Mark IV) (column shift with front bench seat option)
'64 Wagoneer (with IFS option) (39,000 original miles)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------