landau bars

[spastic_chicken]

The panels ARE out of the car. That's how I was able to take the picture of the bolt. I've tried PB blaster and two guys to try to turn this thing. No dice. I gotta go to extreme measures to get this top done before it snows here. I will deal with the bars later. It shouldn't be too big of a project.

The picture you posted. Is that inside the car, or the outside?

[jason_sps]

Yeah, the picture was taken from the inside of the car...with my phone. The "bolt" is rounded instead of hex shaped. I'm gonna cut it off from the inside of the car with a cutoff wheel and then tap out the landau bar caps and put a screw in it.

[Morella]

My opinion, after a quick glance?

It looks like a rivnut that slipped through the metal when the mounting hole became worn out of fit. Does the landau bar feel loose if you wiggle it on the outside?

-denise

[jason_sps]

I got the passenger side off by unscrewing the knobs at the end of the bar. They came off with no problems. The driver side, however, slip real bad when I try to unscrew it. The top bolt is gonna have to be grinded off. It seems as though it is a rivnut and its slipping in the body of the car.

[Morella]

I don't doubt it. Rivnuts are handy. I have a rivnut kit in the top of my box, but I don't normally put them into glas because it can't hold them. You have a subinterference fit, so your rivnut is constantly applying radial compression stress to the nut side while your glas is flexing. The weakest element goes, which is the glas.

You can cut the rivnut off flush, if you're very careful not to hit your glas, then I would choose another fastener, which takes a hole that is the same size as the old bolt hole, and fill and drill. If you know a good body man, it shouldn't cost much. All you're doing is having a hole fixed. Make sure that your new bolt has enough of a grip length to go through the glas to the fastener. Get your caliper out and check the depth before you head to the Grade 5 or better aisle at the hardware store. I usually take a caliper and tape measure when I buy hardware, because people dig through the bins and dump bolts back into the wrong slots.

Another option is to drill up to the next size, but that presents another problem. Foofoo such as landau bars are usually cast and brittle, and unless it has been improperly installed (perhaps at the factory), the larger bolt will probably not fit through the hole in your landau bar. If you drill it out, you risk cracking around the brittle metal, perhaps even before you get the drill bit through it, unless you have the speeds and pressures for the metal and are very familiar with your drill press.

I do believe that I would choose another fastener, and have the hole repaired, if it is worn out of spec. A rivnut is not designed to turn, so if you applied radial force to it, which you cannot keep tangential with a monkey wrench, then your rivnut has applied some torture to the glas.

I apologize for crossing fields. There are a dozen of so field repairs that you could do that would last for years, but I don't recommend that sort of thing. I assume that you want your coach to be ready for the freeway, where you will be hit by blasts of wind, and any loose accesory that is attached to glas will flutter. I usually try to wiggle all of my chrome parts before I exceed city speeds.

HTH

-denise

[DEATH ZEPPELIN]

so you found the knobs finally.



if the nut is slipping, clamp some vice grips on it and have someone else hold while you turn the knobs or vice versa.

[jason_sps]

First off, Morella, I have no idea what you were talking about. I am not doing any work on any of the glass. I have a hearse, not a combo or an ambulance. I am working strictly with the back coach. The landau bars on the driver side is being a pain in the ass to come off. The passenger side bar came right off when I unscrewed the round ends of the landau bars. The driver side landau bar ends will not unscrew like the passenger side did. I have applied a locking wrench with PB blaster and even had a friend help me. we could not break it free so I took my dremel with a sanding wheel and sanded the bolt down to the threads of the screw. I then split the bolt and popped the screw (the round landau bar cap) out. That was the bottom landau cap. Now I need to get the top cap off, but to do that I needed to peel back a bit of the ceiling liner and get between the interior frame and the body with a cutting wheel. I can't fit my dremel in there so I will use the cutting wheel to cut the entire bolt and screw off the landau bar cap. I am going to have to either tap into the back of the cap or weld a screw onto the back of the cap then tack weld a lock bolt to the inside of the car body. I'm going to have to do that to the bottom cap as well. There is nothing for the screw to screw into without tack welding a bolt onto the body.

[Morella]

Rivnuts are handy for that purpose.

-denise

[jason_sps]

I got both bars off the car and sanded ans primed the car down. The only problem I have now is it is getting pretty cold here and I have very minimal time to work on the car and no garage.

[Morella]

First off, Morella, I have no idea what you were talking about. I am not doing any work on any of the glass.

I get a lot of that. Military Intelligence calls it the "g-factor", an ability to speak jargon across fields. Most people just call it "a pain in the ass to understand."

When I said "glas", I was referring to fiberglass, not window glass. I was saying that a rivnut would not be a good fastener for fiberglass because it depends upon friction between itself and the hole that it goes into. Since the fiberglass is a weaker material (in this situation), the hole will probably "waller out", and the rivnut will just spin around when you turn the bolt to remove it later on.

What did the other bolt screw into? Mine appear to be held by self-locking flanged fasteners on the inside, but I have never tried to remove them.

-denise

[jason_sps]

I don't even know what you would call the nut itself. All I know is that the driver side was a pain in the ass

[Morella]

Something in nylon might be a good choice...I'm sure that the guys here (and maybe some of the girls) would agree.

-denise