Headlight Rivets

Hi All!

I have to tear my headlight buckets down to get them re-chromed. The challenge here is that there are rivets on the bottom of the buckets for the lens retainers and the headlight bucket stands. Are these little rivets available? I talked to one headlight guy and he suggested using pop-rivets instead.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Steve

Check McMaster Carr......................Bob

McMaster Carr does not ship to Canada.

Restoration Supply Co has threaded rivet replacements which is probably what your looking for. Check page 38 of their catalog

http://www.restorationstuff.com/pdf/RestorationSupplyCompany.pdf

Hmmm. Seems to me I already knew that. Sorry for the false lead. That said there must be a Canadian clone of McMaster. Or hopefully RS can help you...............Bob

Got any friends in the USA that you can have the rivets shipped to who can ship to Canada?

Call Restoration Specialties in Pa At 814-467-9842. They do carry those rivet bolts in stainless steel and do ship worldwide. The bolts have a small head like a carriage bolt but no square lock under the head.

The threaded rivet (or sometimes called slotless screw) are available in round and truss head in popular machine screw sizes. Restoration Supply seems to have the most variety to suit the needs. Stainless when polished resembles nickel/almost chrome like. Suggest cutting a slot across the tip of the threaded portion using a thin Dremel cutoff wheel and hold the rivet with a small flat blade screwdriver while using a small box wrench to tighten the nut.

I have found small rivets in blister packs at my local Ace Hardware store. Maybe Canadian Tire or something like that will have some. The tubular ones are a little tough to set. I got some small bearing balls at the same store and used ViseGrips to squeeze the ball down on the end of the tube end until it spread a little. Having a helper to hold things makes a big difference, unless you have four arms. The helper can also keep an eye on where the ball goes flying if you haven't got it gripped well when you start squeezing. I also drilled a shallow hole in the end of a small square steel bar to finish off the spreading and set the rivet tight. See the balls and the tool in the lower right of the attached photo.

Canadian Tire's hardware stock only caters to home owners these days. Even Home Depot and Lowes has a wider variety. Spaenaur in Waterloo Ontario does have a huge variety but does not stock the rivets Steve needs. I have ordered supplies from both Restoration Specialties and Restoration Supplies (and would continue to do so). The big difference I have found is that Restoration Supplies is much quicker at shipping their products. Bye the way, I have tried having McMaster Carr ship to a US address.......that doesn't work either.

Thanks for the help guys! This is perfect, I am going to save a few bucks changing the rivets myself rather than having the chrome shop do it! I was under the impression that McMaster-Carr did deal with Canadians. I was looking at buying some copper bus bar at work and our machine shop told me to look in the McMaster-Carr catalog to pick out the copper. Regardless, I can put together a decent order with Restoration Supply Company to make this a worth while order.

Thanks again, Steve

Additional Info on threaded rivets for headlight buckets, trunk hardware, and other appications. Tioga Stainless (http://tiogastainless.com/) carries round and truss head threaded rivets in sizes ranging from 4-40 to 1/4 inch. Totally stainless (http://www.totallystainless.com) has them for 6-32, 8-32, and 10-32, for round and truss head styles.

You can easily make your own . The ones you need are flat . So take a nail of same dia. shaft cut off . I tight fit to burr and hammer peen with more and lighter strikes then hard one shot hits . No heat needed . I do all the time when building 19th century carriages .

                                                     tom