How to remove Rivets on the Rear Bumper Stay

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.

Joined
Sep 27, 2015
Threads
15
Messages
162
Location
Kansas City
quick question, I'm replacing my rear bumper with a new OEM Chrome and finally after much work got the old one off as well as the Trailer Hitch. I thing all the dang bolts where welded LOL. But with a little determination I got if all off. My old bumper was pretty well beat to death hence the start of this project.

Upon removal I noticed my passenger side Rear Stay is bent up pretty bad, hence the beat up old bumper.

Anyway I noticed that this Stay is held on by 3 pin looking things, not a bolt (original factory). So my question is how do you get those off to put on a new Rear Stay with 3 new regular bolts. My thought here is to us a dremel cutting wheel and cut the head off. Anyone dealt with these before.

Attached is the piece I am referring to #52107 STAY.

Screen Shot 2016-01-07 at 4.15.32 PM.png
 
Angle grinder one side off. Smack with round punch or chisel to remove.
 
Brute force, grind an x in the top and hope that is enough, if you can get the bolt to rotate down there is more room to cut them off.
So I took some time to clean the thread, oil it a lot and cry a bit, watch all Dallas episodes and try again :poof:


Edit:the rivets are a nightmare, go with the tip below from @2mbb

Drilling and slamming and still nothing: dont even try it.
This is from C-channel, :worms:
file.php


I replaced one bumper side with regular bolts, still have to other side:

file.php
 
Last edited:
Perfect that was exactly what I was thinking. Will have to get after it now :). Thanks!!!
 
Those are rivets. I replaced mine on front at one point, and bolted the new ones on. There are lots of threads about removing rivets, mostly associated with removing the rear bumper cross member for installation of after market rear bumper.

I took mine to a muffler shop and the guy burned the rivets out with his torch. It took him longer to walk the torch over and light it up than it did to actually remove the rivets. Others use air chisels, or grinding the heads down, etc. It's pretty much what ever works for you.
 
I used a long air chisel bit,just watch out for ricochet rivet heads.
 
Just want to say thanks to all the comments and help. I ended up using a Dremel cutting wheel (thats all I had) which worked pretty good. I am sure if I had a grinder with a cutting wheel it would have been a little faster. After cutting the rivet head off flush with the metal I then drilled a hole into the rivet a pretty good way, then proceed to use a hammer and a punch to punch them out. Not hard but just time consuming! All done and now on to phase two of wire brushing all the back exposed frame and doing a little frame painting and rust prevention before installing the new bumper.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom