Ugh, what a week. The MINI breaks down and I'm waiting for a diagnosis still
from the dealership & insurance adjuster. That was Friday.
Anyways, since I had free time I got the Spitfire running. It is running very
nicely since the oil change.
The few problems I ran into. No matter how hard I tried with the rivet gun, all
the button snaps I rivted into place weren't perfect jobs. They are a bit
loose, some I can freely spin around and another I can shift a bit. What's the
trick to getting button snaps on? Was the shank length of the rivets(the
shortest I could find in my variety pack) still too long?
I tried forever to use the screw-on button snaps to work on the b-post
finishers. This involved trying to get a nut & washer on the inside of the body
to line up through the b-post and then to catch the thread on. My result: One
b-post finisher without a button at all, and one without a finisher WITH a
button screwed on.
I did my best to line up the b-post finisher on the drivers side, and realized
the hole in the body didn't line up to the hole in the finisher, despite being
able to put the inner screw on. I might have to drill a new hole in the side
and try it again. Ugh. As for the other side, no matter how many times I tried
with a pick+tape+nut, I could not screw on the button through the b-post
finisher.
As for the female end button snaps and trying to make one, what's the trick? I
have a hammer + the chisel thing. I try to swack the "tube" down, and it never
lands down straight. It always goes off on an angle, thus creating a
shifted-off connection that usually gets in the way of the "male" end of the
button snap.
I looked on the old ragtop, and the 'flared' area inside is quite small, almost
like a ring. Should I Dremel down the tubes to just barely through the hole,
then hammer? I even tried a variation on hammering by using a c-clamp to "screw
down" to flare it out. No luck. It shifted.
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