VIN rivets

Who sells VIN rivets to reattach the VIN to the dash ??

rivets

Here is one place out of many. Google is your friend:0)

http://cudajunction.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=34

Dave Walden at ECS...IIRC they are $25 pair

Can ya still get these, cough cough.....

What are they...???

Looks like blank broadcast sheets.

Don't look like rivets though ...

In this day and age, any printer on the planet could make a blank broadcast sheet. Making it look old and original is another matter.

ECS

Got them from a guy who bought out Jules Daddio. $40./pair ... Canadian !!!

Isn't that more than what ECS sells them for?

ECS is $29.... not sure about the Canadian thing

right now $29 US is close to $40 Canadian. Then there's shipping - for which ECS wanted stupid money to ship to Canada. I got a deal !!

If I would have seen this sooner I would have given you a pair !! also, how does one charge stupid money for something that can go to Canada first class mail for $1.20 ?

You tell me !!! I guess the stamps take more spit !

To that point, there was someone on here last week talking about someone making valve cover spacers so I went to his site. He wants the same amount of money to ship to Canada as he does to ship to Australia. The hilarious thing is the guy's in Pennsylvania - literally on the Canadian border !!!

I actually called up Dave and inquired about this as something did not seem right. Here was his reply to me:


"ECS doesn't dictate the cost of shipping in the US or outside of the country. We charge just enough to cover our costs of sending an item to the customer. We have used standard shipping to Canada but have no way of tracking or insuring the contents. On multiple occasions our Canadian customers have claimed that they did not receive their shipments. Since we cannot track or insure "standard" shipped items to Canada, we have no way to tell if the customers shipments arrived safety or at all. At that point, we have no choice but to resend the items using a carrier like Fed Ex in order to guarantee the delivery. We no longer take any chances sending merchandise that cannot be tracked or confirmed. Unless it's in the Continental US, we always use a specialized delivery service that provide guaranteed and insured delivery."


I have to admit, I do the same thing whenever I sell something. I'd want to have a tracking number in order to know where it goes or what might have happened to it. Unfortunately, shipping companies like UPS or even the US Postal Service does not take pride in how they do their job. I've seen it too many times on the news (especially around Christmas time) where the driver tosses the box across the front lawn onto the stairs or tosses it over the fence which leads to things getting broken, lost, etc. How many times can one person eat the cost of a product that gets "lost, damaged, whatever" before you start doing the logical thing. So, yes, while it might cost "stupid money" (as you put it) the extra money involved goes for insurance and tracking which is piece of mind that you will get the item that you paid for. If the part didn't arrive because you opted for the $1.20 envelope postage, I'd bet that you'd be screaming that you want a replacement shipped out right away at the manufacturers cost. Sometimes you gotta pay a little more in order to get things in life.

:quote /

Sometimes you gotta pay a little more in order to get things in life.

quote/





I guess thats why Year One sends a $2.00 decal in $8.50 UPS packaging !

Nah, those big companies charge a percentage of the item for the freight / shipping. I remember ordering a brake pressure bleeder from Original Parts Group back in the day where the tool was over $180 or so and they wanted to charge me $38 for shipping. This was also the same company who was charging over $300 for a NOS tail light lens for a vehicle and when I inquired about what that would cost to ship, they said over $60. This, for a lens that is super light weight. After that, I quit buying from companies who charged by the percentage of the total purchase for what the shipping costs vs. the actual cost.

I guess it's like Dave said during our conversation, some folks just have to play their dishonest games and say they didn't receive their item. The company has no choice but to send another and incur all the extra costs. The dishonest few ultimately ruin it for the rest of us who end up paying for it in the end.

I agree with this 100%. The way the systems work nowadays the chances of something getting lost or stolen are 1 in a million - even without tracking. Maybe the posties rip open birthday cards for the cash but ripping open unmarked packages is unlikely.

So you see, we all pay for crime!

If you are picky the rivets from cuda junction were a closer match to the original ones from a 1969 St. Louis built B-body, the ECS ones had a smaller outside Diameter on the head, not sure if all plants were the same. Might be hard to tell once it is installed but it was noticeable enough for me to order the cuda junction ones after I got the ones from ECS.
Not trying to bash ECS ether, nothing but good things to say about all their products.

Interesting. The ones I got from ECS when I had to respray the steel dash in my Dad's 69 GTX vert (St. Louis plant) were the exact same size as what was in the car. Maybe it is because his car was an early 69 ? (SPO date of 10/3/68 )

Just checked mine,head size is 0.222,exactly same as my Superbird.I bought what I have from a fellow at the Nationals 15 yrs ago for $.25 ea,he had a couple thousand.

I've got 500 or so from the Windsor plant...I'll check the head diameter.

My original ones measure 0.248 from flat to flat and 0.263-0.267 from point to point.
The ones from ECS measured 0.224 from flat to flat and 0.241 from point to point.
The ones I got from cuda junction are 0.238-0.241 and 0.258-0.259 from point to point.

For reference the original ones are off a 10-24-1968 built car.

The ones that I replaced were on a SPO dated 10/3/68 car from the St. Louis Plant. The ones from ECS were the same size. Who would have thought that I needed to take a pic to show a comparison for something like this on our car for future. lol.

Seems like a lot of fuss over .024 which is about 25/1000 of an inch.

I agree, not much of a difference. Most people may not care and would never notice but some people might like to know.

I am not one of those "if it was that way on my car it had to be that way on every car" kind of guys. I am sure that they didn't spec out the dimensions of the rivets to ±0.001 so I am guessing there are variations out there. Even the two original ones on mine were a little different.

In my case I was repairing a rust spot on the dash and not respraying the vin tag so the smaller head on the ECS rivet stuck out like a sore thumb with the wear marks from the original rivets being visible.

Was there not originally two different length rivets ? Long for padded dashes and short for steel frames ?

What wear marks would there have been on the VIN tag? The only wear marks that I would imagine being there would be from trying to drill it out and the rivet spinning. If that is the case, it could have started wobbling ever so slightly when it was spinning in the hole. That itself could be enough of a variance to give you that .01 difference.

Every tag I have removed from a dash on an A or B-body, has had witness marks from the rivet heads.