Air cleaner front plate restoration

Has anyone attempted a full dismantle and re assembly with black plastic rivets on an air cleaner cover on
an MFI 73?

If so details/pics please.

Hi Clyde, I have done several of these in the past. I have not removed the plastic studs completely just trimmed around the heads enough so I could pull the metal plate off leaving as much of the plastic stud as possible. Then I had the metal piece stripped and powder coated replaced it on the plastic studs then heated up a 1/4" punch and re-melted the tops of the plastic studs to create a new head.

OK that works I guess

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Originally Posted by mfitton

Hi Clyde, I have done several of these in the past. I have not removed the plastic studs completely just trimmed around the heads enough so I could pull the metal plate off leaving as much of the plastic stud as possible. Then I had the metal piece stripped and powder coated replaced it on the plastic studs then heated up a 1/4" punch and re-melted the tops of the plastic studs to create a new head.

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Exactly what I did and it works as described. Just don't overtrim around the heads. I did on one and used epoxy to fix that as I didn't have enough material to remelt. Fortunately once painted, it was completely unnoticable.

The problem is the plastic rivets were never painted originally , so I do some careful masking .

The melting process of the plastic studs duplicates the original process exactly. If you look at the original stud tops they are shaped differently.

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Originally Posted by Richy

The problem is the plastic rivets were never painted originally , so I do some careful masking .

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Yeah, I didn't have a choice on the one I was careless with. But a Q-tip and some satin black paint and you can't really tell unless you look really closely. The others I did as Mike laid out.