Rocker panel rivets, (Again) Options

[chmillman]

Thinking about pulling my rocker panels and having them repainted - they are looking a bit dingy and grayish. Plus all the discussions here about looking underneath…

They are currently held on by the plastic rivets - I think - they don’t look great and probably not salvageable. I thought I would put the panels back on with pop rivets, which seem like a more solid solution - black ones are available - I don’t mind having to drill them out if I want to remove the panels again at a later date. I don’t anticipate doing it often. Is there anything that argues strongly against this?

[chmillman]

In the end I went with screws - because I found the right ones. 3.5mm x 13 long, black, low profile round head, and with a T10 torx driver. And to top it off under the black coating, the screws are... stainless. I didn't believe that at first, but lo and behold, you can't pick them up with a magnet. And I found them at the local Home Depot-style do-it store... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

What's cool is that you just screw them right in - they're the perfect size, no drilling out of the body holes needed. The heads are lower than the rivets and a little wider.

There was a significant amount of crud under the rocker panels - I don't think they had been removed since the car was restored in 2011. I was happy to see that the longs were still nice and clean - no evidence of rust anywhere. Probably won't remove the rockers again that often, maybe once every couple of years...

[Aayala]

In the end I went with screws - because I found the right ones. 3.5mm x 13 long, black, low profile round head, and with a T10 torx driver. And to top it off under the black coating, the screws are... stainless. I didn't believe that at first, but lo and behold, you can't pick them up with a magnet. And I found them at the local Home Depot-style do-it store... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

What's cool is that you just screw them right in - they're the perfect size, no drilling out of the body holes needed. The heads are lower than the rivets and a little wider.

There was a significant amount of crud under the rocker panels - I don't think they had been removed since the car was restored in 2011. I was happy to see that the longs were still nice and clean - no evidence of rust anywhere. Probably won't remove the rockers again that often, maybe once every couple of years...

Do you mind taking a picture of where you installed them and the condition of what was under the rocker panels? Would be curious to how they look.

[chmillman]

Do you mind taking a picture of where you installed them and the condition of what was under the rocker panels? Would be curious to how they look.

I didn't take any pictures of the longs with the panels off. But basically they looked shiny like newly painted, just wiped off a light dusty coating with a damp rag. The 'crud' was actually accumulated on the inside of the rocker panels, when I took them off most of it just fell out on the floor and a light fiber brush got rid of the rest.

Below is a picture of a screw head in place and next to it there is a plastic rivet that holds on the sill cover for comparison. There was the same plastic rivet before where the screw now is. Mine are (were) all semi-transparent. The rivets are single-use only, you destroy them pulling them out.