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Valve Cover Plate Rivets: Useless junk or am I missing something?

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blueskies

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I recently replaced the two plates - Austin and valve clearance specs - on top of the 100-6 valve cover. The replacement plates and rivets came from the usual supplier.

Unless I am missing something, don't waste your money on the rivets. The rivets supplied are made for an application much thicker than the combined thickness of the valve cover and the plate. This is not the first time that I have seen this type of rivet, and usually installation goes well. In this case, I tried to install the rivets by holding a metal cupped plate on the top and a punch underneath - carefully hit with a hammer. The rivets have a small hole drilled in the bottom side, and they should spread at that point, firmly holding the plate in place. But the hole is not drilled nearly deep enough, so the rivet spreads without holding the plate tightly against the valve cover. So the plate is very loose when the rivet is spread. It also looks terrible, from underneath. One could take a very small drill bit and try to drill that hole deeper, and one could also cut off the rivet to make it shorter. But I doubt that the result would be satisfactory.

So after drilling out the supplied rivet, out came the pop rivet tool and pop rivets. That worked well. The only problem with that is that the pop rivets have holes in the top instead of the smooth, rounded look of the original rivets.
 
Well: blueskies

You are going to have to:

1] Plug the holes to prevent oil leakage

---------------------OR

2] redo it and not drill the rivets so deep


GOOD INFO:encouragement:

user-online.png
 
Plugging the holes in the top of the rivets may be a good idea. I had thought of putting a small dab of JBWeld in those holes. Done right, it might look correct. I have noticed that others have also used pop rivets for attaching these plates; now I can see why. The quality of the supplied parts is disappointing.
 
One can find those kind of tubular rivets at a reasonably equipped hardware store (Ace, in my case). They come in various lengths and diameters. They are in the same drawer with the split rivets.
 
I replaced the plates on my valve cover and used rivets from British Car Specialists (www.britishcarspecialists.com). I had no trouble driving the rivets to make the plates tight, but I still took the precaution of coating the shank of the rivets with a sealant before driving them. No leaks.
I had a friend buck the rivet heads while I hit the end to drive it. Just be careful not to let the tools slip and mar the plates or the valve cover paint job.
 
I too recently installed the plates with rivets from British Car Specialists and also had trouble initially. Glad I bought some spares. Seems like one of the plates is thicker (valve clearance) than the other so it installed okay. But on the other I used a washer on the inside to take up the gap since the rivet as previously described is a hair too long. Yes I know about the possible loose part but we did put some form a gasket (The Right Stuff) material glob over the top of all the rivet ends. I will see how is holds up when we take off the valve cover after a 500 mile break in period.

The way we flattened the rivets was to tape a very small socket (4mm) to the top of the rivet as the socket end formed a sort of cup, turned it over and held the valve cover with socket taped to it against a block of wood. Then from the inside hammered down the rivet using a tapered punch.

Did not come out too bad.

thanks

jjs64bj8
 
I did mine last year, with parts from Moss. I inserted the supplied rivets (not the pop rivet style) held them in place with masking tape, turned the valve cover over, placing the rivet heads on soft wood (eg pine) and struck the back of the rivets. The result was quite good with plates held firmly and no oil leaks. It's either my technique or the rivets I got from Moss were better suited to the job.
 
I use a special driver to set this type of rivet. The face of the tool is concave with a point in the middle. It forms the rivet bottom into a mushroom shape. Might try a leather supply store. Mine is very old and I think I took it off an old rivet set tool. Of course you have to secure the rivet top firmly when using the tool. The mushroom effect makes up for the long rivet.
 
Steve and dancrim - What you describe is how I expected it to work. I do have concave plates to use on the outside of the valve cover and the corresponding parts to use on the inside, which fit inside the hole in the rivet. I think that the problem is that the supplied rivets are made for a much thicker application and they won't firmly hold the plates, at least not without totally mashing and distorting them. They also don't look right, as they project too far from the bottom of the valve cover and don't mushroom evenly without splitting. One could add small washers at that point, but that wouldn't look good either. The originals that I drilled out were quite different from the replacements; the factory did a nice job on these.
 
blueskies said:
Steve and dancrim - What you describe is how I expected it to work. I do have concave plates to use on the outside of the valve cover and the corresponding parts to use on the inside, which fit inside the hole in the rivet. I think that the problem is that the supplied rivets are made for a much thicker application and they won't firmly hold the plates, at least not without totally mashing and distorting them. They also don't look right, as they project too far from the bottom of the valve cover and don't mushroom evenly without splitting. One could add small washers at that point, but that wouldn't look good either. The originals that I drilled out were quite different from the replacements; the factory did a nice job on these.
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Mine is 40928 and it had the stickers on it and not the riveted plates. I'm sure mine is correct since I bought it in 1972.
 
Patrick, the decals (instead of the earlier riveted metal plates) began to appear more or less consistently on BJ8 valve covers at about engine /H13300 (approx. October 1966). I say "consistently" because, like almost all such detail changes to these cars there was no definite cutoff where the old style appears up to X, and the new style after that. Some later engines still have the rivets, and some earlier ones have the decals. Your engine is /H15635.
 
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