Week 9 of the Storage Unit Rally Build
Posted on Dec 10, 2020
We ran out of things to do so now we can reveal what those quarter turn Dzus fasteners are for: The removable dash panels!
We have never played with these before so this might not go well. Our panels are not very thick so we ordered the fasteners for the thinnest material possible. Fortunately they seem to be the perfect size:
Our dash and removable panels cane pre-drilled for these fasteners but we still had to clearance the center hole to allow the fasteners to sit flush. Then we riveted them in place.
That went well but then we had to attach the springs to the back of the dash panel. In order for the removable panels to sit flush we needed to countersink the holes and to use countersunk rivets. But we couldn’t find any locally. Then an old-school bodywork guy told us how to make our own countersunk rivets. You place a regular river in a 45* flare die and chamfer the end or a short piece of steel brake line. Place this brake line chamfer “tool” over the stem of the river and tap it into the die with a light hammer until it forms a 45*. It worked great!
and enabled us to mount the springs without any frontal protrusions once we filed them flush:
Then we installed our first removable panel. May be time to order some fuse blocks:
The rally computer panel had us worried though as the top right faster was really close to the roll cage. In fact we had already filed it down to get the dash to fit. We went at it without a plan for that one fastener.
After attaching the other fasteners we riveted the top right one in place and filed it down a little to clear the cage but we were still missing one of the rivet holes for the spring. Still, one less countersunk rivet to make!
Then we thought “What the hell. Maybe It will work with half a spring!”
And what do you know; it did!
We decided to hold off on the gauge panel as we’d have to remove all the gauges and switches to install the fasteners. We’ll wait till we do that when we paint it.
We have never played with these before so this might not go well. Our panels are not very thick so we ordered the fasteners for the thinnest material possible. Fortunately they seem to be the perfect size:
Our dash and removable panels cane pre-drilled for these fasteners but we still had to clearance the center hole to allow the fasteners to sit flush. Then we riveted them in place.
That went well but then we had to attach the springs to the back of the dash panel. In order for the removable panels to sit flush we needed to countersink the holes and to use countersunk rivets. But we couldn’t find any locally. Then an old-school bodywork guy told us how to make our own countersunk rivets. You place a regular river in a 45* flare die and chamfer the end or a short piece of steel brake line. Place this brake line chamfer “tool” over the stem of the river and tap it into the die with a light hammer until it forms a 45*. It worked great!
and enabled us to mount the springs without any frontal protrusions once we filed them flush:
Then we installed our first removable panel. May be time to order some fuse blocks:
The rally computer panel had us worried though as the top right faster was really close to the roll cage. In fact we had already filed it down to get the dash to fit. We went at it without a plan for that one fastener.
After attaching the other fasteners we riveted the top right one in place and filed it down a little to clear the cage but we were still missing one of the rivet holes for the spring. Still, one less countersunk rivet to make!
Then we thought “What the hell. Maybe It will work with half a spring!”
And what do you know; it did!
We decided to hold off on the gauge panel as we’d have to remove all the gauges and switches to install the fasteners. We’ll wait till we do that when we paint it.