Heater Box Rebuild - Rivets

[JerryC]

+1 on aluminum rivets with backing washers. I did see a stress crack develop on the first box I rebuilt without washers. I drilled the rivet out and added the washers and there were no other problems. If it is your first heater box rebuild, it's pretty likely something will cause you to take it back out before too long. The problem I found was when the self-stick foam gaskets on the doors came unstuck and blew out of the box. 3M weatherstrip adhesive and bare foam gaskets solved that. It's also quite easy to assembly the flap linkages in such a way that they collided inside the box, so test all functions before installing it in the car.

Also, I used stainless tie wire to replace the rusted out clips on the bottom joint. Just wrap the wire around both tabs and twist the tabs together. Trim neatly, the tabs do hang down underneath and sharp wires are just waiting for a hand to snag.

[rapandi]

Last night I spent some time putting the box altogether. All was going well until I hit a little hiccup.

 

The bracket on which my  heater valve sits is cracked. Here you can see it below:

So I decided to glue it together using some plastic safe glue. After doing that I thought, what if this cracks again? So the engineer in me said why not reinforce that plastic bracket by sandwiching it between two thin sheets of metal. So I had a washing machine that was being thrown out and I salvaged some metal from its outer body. I cut out two brackets and sandwiched them as shown below.

Everything looked fine and it fit perfectly and so I got everything cleaned up and painted. However what I didn't do is swing that actuator arm of the valve down to see if the tiny bolt with a hole in the arm (that holds the wire from the box) would clear the lower bolt in the bracket that holds the heater valve to the bracket.  Well guess what it doesn't clear.

 

I tried using a bolt with a very thin head and it still doesn't clear. By clear I mean the arm's swing path is blocked by the collision of the two bolts. Why is this happening? Because the reinforcing plates thickness is forcing the lower bracket bolt to sit further out.

 

Long story short - Do you think I can do without this reinforcement plates and just attach the valve straight to mended plastic bracket?

 

Regards

 

Raj

 

Edited September 13, 2017 by rapandi

[halboyles]

Check out this article regarding reinforcing the bracket.

 

 

[Simeon]

Could you get away with the plate on one side only?

[rapandi]

1 minute ago, Simeon said:

Could you get away with the plate on one side only?

you make a good point. I will try this tonight. I hope it works. Not sure why I didn't think of that. Far too caught up in the problem I guess. Thanks!

[02Les]

Use "low head" screws, flat washers & no spring washers.

[pehlivanov_tii]

Raj, check out my topic for my car in Project blogs-Archive. In some my last posts you will see how i reinforced the original plastic bracket. Like you, but i used tiny sheet metal only on the backside. Check it out, mine turned out very good and kept the original look with the plastic bracket.

[thinksound_mike]

14 hours ago, halboyles said:

Check out this article regarding reinforcing the bracket.

 

 

I've had this article open in a browser tab for months while I re-did my box. Super thorough, it helped a lot. Here's another link for it with different info:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-3_4FJ7hItQufdT7piBrudjmfFfHuNw-sWANvmv9o7g/edit

 

 

Blunt sells the reinforcement bracket from the article's author now too.

 

 

Edited September 13, 2017 by thinksound_mike

[JerryC]

Or, countersink the holes and use flat head screws. There are several online sources for metric screws, and Ace Hardware seems to have a decent selection.

[BarneyT]

Seems to work best with a flat surface on that side of box as it is compressed / sealed again car body I have used large plastic pop rivets with thin flat washers with success in holding two sides together ...

[rapandi]

Hi Team,

 

So I finally completed my heater box! I decided to use button head screws. They work perfectly. I would recommend anyone doing this refurb to use bolts, nuts and washers. I had to open the box twice because I was not happy with how the flaps were closing so I had to carry out adjustments etc. It was a royal pain doing this box but I got it done. I tested the fan by hooking it up to the car battery and it works fine. All the hand controls work smoothly now. I had to fabricate a few brackets too for the controls that control the foot and side flaps. I had two heater boxes so I made one good one from the two.

 

Just wanted to share some of my pictures. 

 

Thank you as always for your input. If you see any mistakes in my work then please do tell. Lol I am not opening that damn heater box again! 

 

Regards

 

Raj

[Simeon]

Beautiful work there. Good for another 40 odd years at least!

[D.martijn]

May I ask why you didn't paint the heater core itself? As it'll likely start rusting again?

Looks great though!!

[rapandi]

1 hour ago, D.martijn said:

May I ask why you didn't paint the heater core itself? As it'll likely start rusting again?

Looks great though!!

You are right. I should have painted it. I did think of it today whilst putting the box together. To be honest I just got lazy. I hope the core and the fan don't die on me until I sell the car decades from now or when my kids inherit it.

[rapandi]

1 hour ago, Simeon said:

Beautiful work there. Good for another 40 odd years at least!

Thank you Simeon