Hi, need some help. 69 car. Im working on getting the underbody/engine bay cleaned and painted for going back with the restored chassis. Wile doing so one of the #1 body mount support brackets came off. Can I just re-rivet it back on???? Im asking because one revet is out but does not seem to be a thru hole. Looking at the AIM (A15) it appears to have a support plate and is backed against the firewall. Looking for some input on fixing this?? I was thinking that ether the old rivet is still in the when I poked around with a punch or that I could just drill a hole for the new rivet. Any help would be great!

 

The rivet remains are probably still in the hole. The rivets are aluminum and once the head of the rivet is removed I use a punch to drive out the remaining rivet shaft.

 

Perfect, that's what I was hoping. I just didn't want to punch the reinforcement back or something. Doesn't look like you can get back there to retrieve anything.

 

just be careful you don't knock that plate off when using a punch .

here's a pic of what,s behind , the two top pieces in the picture ,and they can fall back away from the wall and then you cant get at them without major surgery to the glass





before you go using a punch , maybe grind what's left of the centre rivet flat and then carefully drill out the remaining part of the rivet , then you can put something in there to lock the plate tight against the wall . Start with a small drill piece and work up to big enough.

If you do this to two holes then your good as that plate can spin off enough to ruin your day .


The untreated plate is more than likely kind of rust stuck to the glass as well , which actually helps you do what you need to do.

 

I'm doing a body off on a 71. I have asked this same question myself on the Forum. I had to replace 90 percent of the birdcage on my car. In doing this I had to remove the front clip and the firewall from my car. My car spent all of its life in Canada. The the portions of the No. 1 mounts on the engine compartment side were gone completely. The backing place for these mounts still existed in the firewall area just in front of the oval fresh air ducts. I sandblasted and power coated these original backing plates. I purchase new mounts from a vendor. If your looking to replace these mounts with factory type soft aluminum rivets the problem is there is no way to get a backing buck on the rivets to set or drive them. These rivets have to be driven with the gun from the engine compartment area and bucked from the internal area between the oval duct and the backing plates. I ended up cutting a window in the firewall directly behind the mounts large enough to get a buck in there to set the rivets. I will re-fiberglass the fiberglass windows that I cut out later when I'm done securing the mounts. I have thought long and hard on how to access these areas to set these rivets and without the firewall removed from the car, and sitting on a work bench with the access windows cut out I have no other suggestions.

Jeff, NJ

 

Once I got the old rivets out I was just going to use regular pop rivets. They'll still work, right?

 

That's what I did ,its way less work and they hold fine .

 

I figure it would be okay...but every time I think that, murphy has his/her? Way!

I'm going to try and get to it this weekend, but wanted to get everything cleaned up first. Parts came in a few days ago.

 

maybe try to get the front plate back in place,then get 1 rivet out,put in a new rivet,then 1 more and rivet it back in place,and so on till all are replaced,