Still bumming it at home, have to make do with what I can, so I decided to proceed with the frame, something I can do sitting down in the front porch. To start off, I dremel cleaned out the race seats/ledges, then taped them up so I could spray the inside of the neck with some rubberized rust encapsulator. The barbarians at the powder coating shop drilled out only one of the VIN rivets and broke the head off the other ugh. The new VIN plate also came with a set of rivets that were the perfect size for the old holes, so I went with those and held the slightly thicker ones from The Other Derek as a back up in case I botched something.
The stock size are 1/16" or whatever metric equivalent of that, so I drilled out the stuck rivet as carefully as I could. The drill bit is so thin, it wasn't chucking right on to my handy Dewalt, so I wrapped a few laps of tape on it to beef up the grip. Worked great, so much so that one slip of the hand and the bit broke off lodging itself into the frame
Once my cardy like symptoms subsided after that shock, I was able gently maneuver it out using two safety pins. Measured the depth and it was just about right length for the new rivet to secure itself. Taped up my trusty hammer and was ready to pound at it.
Then I recalled Ron's build and how he nicely reshaped the VIN plate on a PVC pipe. Rigged up that set up and rolled it gently with a paint can. The new one is a bit too stiff and kept fighting hard, so let it go after there was enough of a curve to get most of the glued surface on the frame.
Just as I was ready to set it in place, I noticed the new plate kept sticking to my fingers in one spot. Looked closely and ghaaah, guey gunk from sticky tape that was holding the tiny ziplock with the rivets in it. So I tried to wipe it off with some acetone, BAAAD IDEA. Acetone wiped off a layer of the nice and shiny anodizing with it
After my second shock subsided, I decided what's done is done, no time to wait for another one and went ahead with it. When it came into daylight from the basement to the front porch, it looked spectacular! The fading makes it look like its 40 years old again, that worked out well, should subdue some possible questioning at the DMV
Now that I finally set it in place, I realized that its about half a mil too short and the rivet holes weren't lining up perfectly. Came this far, wasn't stopping so I glued it such that both were off a quarter mil, then hammared them in with a little coercing. Went in without much of a fight, but I failed to realize that hammering the first one put holes in the tape
One bad hit on the second one and the "N" from "IN" was annihilated
Oh well, now looks like its 41 years old, moving on. Final tapping with the thick styro sheet doubled and laid on top to get the final curvature and as much of it to stick as possible. Its pretty secure so calling it done.
