Ford GPW frame riveting instructions

[Viking27]

Hello all,

I wanted to make a new thread that deals with the riveting work on the GPW frames in detail. When I was faced with having
to do this work on my 2 GPW frames and 2 more owned by my friends, I saw that we needed to get a lot of info and buy or
make some special tools for this job. I want to show you how we did this, so that maybe more guys will think of saving their
frames (Jeeps) insted of scrapping them.

There were bits of info here and there to be found on the net. Ed Champions and Paul´s (pj-tigger) threads here on the Gee
where helpful. It took me over a year to find the right Huck riveting puller to do the blind rivets in the frame and to find a
reliable supplier of the BOM rivets that would sell them in low quantity.

I managed to find and aquire what I beleive is the most original Ford GPW 1942 left intact, in Iceland. It had been sitting in an
old mans garage for 47 years. The frame was in very poor condition as can be seen here:

[Viking27]

Once frame inner rails were out, the frame was sandblasted which showed the extend of the damage:

[Viking27]

We welded in ca. 20 lbs ( 9kg) of steel to repair this frame:

[Viking27]

[Viking27]

When all the repairs were done, I took the 2 frames to my friend Johann Tryggvason, a farmer and metal smith.
Living in Akureyri. We had been working on this for some time. I think that this is likely the first time in
30-40 years that 3 Ford GPWs come together in once place in Iceland:





Johann built a special work table, mounted to the concrete floor, that has removable side beams that can be
moved to the sides to allow full access with the riveting clamp. The table is perfectly aligned, so when the
frame is clamped down, its outer rails are straight before riveting.

[Viking27]

[Viking27]

Riveting team:



From left: 1) Johann "Pontiac man" (we are having tough time infecting him with OD fever!) 2) Johann Tryggvason, farmer and "metal artist"
3) Ingimar, teacher at Verkmentaskólinn (Workmanship Collage) 4) Hinrik, author of this thread.

This job can be done by only 2 men, but that requires some thinking such as this. We mounted the torch on an extendable stand with a heavy
base which is hard to tip over. Pleaseeee do not try to do this on a flimsy mount that can cause your house to burn down!

[Nikko]

Hi Hinrik
Happy New Year
and what a project you guys have going on that is one wery nice FRAME TABLE you got there
and the pictures show all the metal work
This EASY adjustable frame table is GREAT so i think everyone can build one
Also i like the name "Pontiac man" name i guess i ride a real nice Pontiac

Cheers fromThe North
Nikko

[Viking27]

First we were planing to use what most guys use, an air rivet gun and specially built bucking bar.
The plan was to weld it to a flat base plate that could be bolted onto a heavy anvil:

[Viking27]

Nikko,

Yes, the beauty of this table is how simple it is. Its easy to make and once you are done with your riveting job, you can
put a plywood plate on top of it and use as a normal worktable. Johann had to take his frame apart totally. When the
sidebeams are removed, its easy to mount the frame onto the frame horizontally. He also made a simple mounts that
attach to the spring hangers. Its just a tubing welded to a square frame tubing. This allowes you to clamp the frame to
the table while working on it, keeping the frame high and your back straight

[Viking27]

I found a video on youtube that showed a heavy hydraulic tool squeezing a red hot rivet. I sent it to Johann and from
then on, that was the way we were going to do it! But how...no tools easily available or too expensive, so Johann built
one out of a 10 ton bottle jack. This is the prototype:



I did not like the manual function of this one, so I bought an air driven 12 ton bottle jack on Ebay and sent to Johann. He
came up with version 2 of the tool. Seen in action here on a youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yA7q5Xs9PA

That one was not strong enough, and bent:

[Viking27]

That led to making of version 3, seen here:







As you can see the end of the clamp has a removable end piece that has been cut on a lathe to create the "pointed tip"
original style GPW rivet. This is also a must as you need 4 different sizes to get access everywere in the frame.

[Viking27]

The blind rivets we used are Huck BOM rivets. The frame uses 2 sizes 5/16 and 3/8. Here is an info from Hucks catalog.
It shows you what the partnumbers are, the dia of hole and what grip length to use:





The Huck catalog tells you what guns can pull these rivets, but they will only give you the partnumbers of the latest
3 models of which 2 require a seperate hydraulic rig. We could not find anyone locally that had this or anyone that would
rent this to us in Iceland. The cost of a new complete rig with pulling heads was in the $5000 range, so that was not
an option. I did some research into what older models could pull these, and came up with Huck model 353 and bought
one on Ebay, only to be told later that it does not have the power to pull it (still have not checked it out)

[Viking27]

The Huck gun uses changable heads. You need 2 heads to do the job, Huck partnumber :
99-1272 to do the 3/8 and partnumber 99-769 to do the 5/16. This list is from the Huck catalog,
it should help you find the right tool to buy or rent, but these are all expensive:



This is the Huck website with their catalog on the BOMs:

http://huckinfo.com/BOM.pdf

You can get lucky and get a used older model. I did a google search "used riveting tools" and found a company
in USA that had a Huck model "4800-10000" with a lightly used 5/16 Bom head for $600 which was a bargain:

David Feezell
Feezell Enterprises
http://www.e-airtool.com

[Viking27]

Here is a youtube video I just made (first one I make) of our work. Hope it and this thread will be useful to
anyone in need of doing this work in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLzflSQ5ro