Differential rivits 1929 Pontiac landau

The ring gear in the dif is attached to the spider carrier with dozens of 5/16 rivits. On inspection it seems that one is missing and at least half of the rest are loose enough that they can be turned by hand. I removed one that was noticeably loose to check the condition of the rivit itself. Ugly: galled and worn.

So, they have to go. It seems 5/16 solid rivits are quite a project to install in place, and replacing them with bolrs is not much easier as the rivits have worn the holes open by as much as 0.020, which makes it tough to get that light tap fit. Has anyone dealt with this successfully?

Not a difficult job at all. Everything needs to be clean. It works best if you have a proper swage to put under the head of the red hot rivet and a proper one to round the other end over. Properly done the red hot rivet is placed through the carrier and the gear, the head of the rivet is placed in the swage, the other swage is put over the end of the rivet and one hit with a 5 pound ball pean hammer sets the rivet. One down more to go. Easy as pie. The last time I did it I had an helper and it took us less than ten minutes once we had everything set up. You can do it with a steel block under the head and just the end of the rivet with the hammer to set it but it doesn't look very neat. The main thing is that the first hit (and only one if you have the tool) has to expand the rivet to totally fill the hole and rivet it over to hold the gear in place.