RIVETS

[NJAckers]

I am about to return the galvanised cappings to the rear tub of my 1960 SWB.  I should be grateful for views on the original finish of the vehicle. Specifically would the rivet heads that run horizontally along the tub have been left as they are or would they have been painted.

[Craig T]

The galvanised cappings were all fitted after paint so yes, the rivets would have been left bare silver aluminium. They were solid, dome head rivets on the series 2 and 2A. I think they may have changed to pop rivets as a time saving exercise later on but not until the series 3 days.

The rear corner cappings were also riveted on, solid rivets where you can access both sides and closed, pop rivets were they go into a box section.
The galvanised internal corner brackets in the hard tops were also fitted after paint so once again, bare rivets on the outside. These can be seen around the small rear corner lights in my photo below.

The exception to those rules are the rivets around the door handles and the bonnet. The door skins were fitted to the door frames and the bonnet skin was fitted to the bonnet frame before paint so those solid dome head rivets got painted over.
There are also some dome head rivets up in the roof panel on the hard top and station wagon models. They were also painted over.

Craig.

[NoBeardNoTopKnot]

With the fabled 'the wrong kind of rivets' thread already the defacto unicorn of LR folklore, once the other forums see this one in the wild, I think we can expect them to mock us into oblivion.

Which is a polite way of saying, "They'll take the unmerciful p....."