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Old 10-19-2017, 12:11 PM
longyard longyard is offline
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Default Who Needs Welding?

There is a GREAT museum in Hamburg, Germany that features mostly post-war home-built, or factory prototype cars. The collection is amazing.

One of the cars on display was built by a successful pre-war car racer named Petermax Muller. It was an ultra-low cost project built using old VW "Beetle", and VW Kubelwagen chassis and suspensions parts, but with a body made from a German aluminum/copper alloy called BONDUR. The engine is a VW 1100cc.

Due either to a lack of funds, or lack of welding gas, the very curvaceous body was RIVETED together. The edge of one panel was "stepped" or "joggled", and the adjacent panel was then riveted onto the step. You might think that such a process would leave a discernible "flat spot" in the highly crowned panels, but it didn't. The panels flow as if they were welded and planished. Here are some photos of the car. The rivets are aluminum aircraft type.

Muller built several VW based race cars before Porsche got on the scene, and he did it without factory support (factory at the time was run by the British military) and by mostly trading black-market food stocks for engineering assistance from VW staff at Wolfsburg.

IMG_3639.jpg

IMG_3638.jpg

IMG_3641.jpg

IMG_3640.jpg

IMG_3637.jpg

IMG_3643.jpg
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Old 10-19-2017, 01:04 PM
hot rivet hot rivet is online now
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Could you tell what type of rivets they where? Some seem to have a centre as if they were "pop" type with retained stem?
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Old 10-19-2017, 02:22 PM
longyard longyard is offline
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No Paul, definitely not "pop" rivets. They are aircraft type solid rivets. The center dimple in each one makes it easier to drill them out should repairs be necessary.
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Old 10-19-2017, 03:33 PM
steve.murphy steve.murphy is offline
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They would be AN426AD rivets most likely.
I rememeber a cheat from tech school to remember AD material; a dimple
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo...alumrivets.php
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Old 10-20-2017, 07:52 AM
vroom vroom is offline
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Nice fotos Bill and some nice panel shaping. I have some fotos of rivets to, if I could find them. Rivets seem like a good bet for joining really large panels.
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Old 10-20-2017, 10:58 AM
Marc Bourget Marc Bourget is offline
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The single dimple in the rivet is for identification, not an aide to drilling out.

There are a variety of such indicators depending on alloy (example 2024 uses a nipple, IIRC)
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