Removing Frame Rivets

Hopefully this is the best section for this.

The rear spring hangers and bump stops are held on with rivets. When I did my hydraulic bumpstops I had to remove the factory bracket. I followed Icon's (I think) instructions of cutting an x in the head popping off the four pieces and then hammering out the remaining rivet.

That didn't go as easily as sounded. Many minutes of hammering I ended up just cutting off the rivet heads and another hour of hammering got out the remaining rivets. I never managed to remove the lower ones and just used them as locating dowels and welded the bracket to the frame. Hey...at least it won't get stolen.

In a week I'll need to remove the factory hangers. I think there's close to 15 of these stupid things to remove. I'm debating on buying a small compressor and air chisel to help get them off.

For those that have had to remove those. What did you do?

 

@808inDa503 @inesshell @Shikokaon did this today to install an Archive shackle kit. They said it was "fun" lol

 

Haha. Yeah exactly. I'm half tempted to take it to a shop and pay them to replace the rivets with bolts.

 

Plasma.

 

cut the head off, grind it flush, smak the hangar with a hammer, if you see a clean round line in your grinded flush zone ur good, do that to all the rivets then hammer the bracket off. grind the stubs down flush. your probably going to plate over em anyway if your putting new hangars in. they wont "fall out". if you want em gone and have a hole in your frame "unnecessary" in most cases just use a plasma cutter

 

I'm replacing the hangers with something else. So I need the factory holes. I just wanted a better way to do it. From my last experience I foresee a couple days just to hammer those things out.

Maybe I'll check with some shops. I think 500-600 bucks to replace the rivets with bolts would be worth it. Then I can just bolt on my new stuff.

 

Grinding off the head works, but sometimes the rivet body is so tight in the hole, it separates the frame layers when you pound them out and then you have to clamp them back together again.

 

cutting the head with a angle grinder and pounding it out applies to some of the frame rivets, if you do that shackle flip you will run into rivets that have a double grooved through washers that are tacked on. simply pounding them out with a press/punch is a stroke of luck if the welds on the washers hold and you dont have to cut them out in awkward spaces.

rivets in the rear bump stops is more straight forward but the rear shackle mounts hold in the crossmember for the tire carrier as well

 

First off what exactly are you trying to do and replace? Shackle flips on the 2nd gen tacos are absolutely pointless, there's no benifit, ok you get some more lift, but if you wheel your truck it will ruin your leaf springs, inverted shackle setups are better, they maintain a better spring rate curve.

And if you want to keep the stock crossmember then yes removing the rivets is a pain in the butt. If you can drill em out that works pretty well too.

 

What worked for me is cutting the rivet head off with an angle grinder, then used a flap wheel to flatten out everything. Next I used a punch to mark the center of the river. To complete the job, I drilled out the remainder of the river with a 1/2" bit. Once I got through maybe a 1/16" of material, the rest of the river popped out with no effort. This took maybe five minutes per rivet, where as the air hammer had a much more difficult time punching them out. I tried a few methods to see which one would work best, and I think that drilling them was the quickest and easiest. I didn't have a torch at my disposal, so I didn't try that method.

 

Also, it's much easier to get at those rivets with the bed off of the truck. Really isn't much work to do it either.

 

I ground them flat, then drilled them. Think it was 4 per hanger. Lots of fun.

 

Thanks for the replies! I'll try the drilling method. I know the hammering method alone isn't remotely quick.

I didn't even think about the tire carrier there.

I'm removing the hangers entirely and replacing them for a long travel kit. No shackle flip.

 

Any updates to this? How’d t go?

 

Got them all done. It sucked. Majorly.

Most I had to grind flat and the drill multiple holes to get up to 3/8. Then a lot of hammering. The tire carrier ones are also welded so you have to grind those off too.

By far the worst automotive project I’ve ever done.

 

yayyyy sounds like fun! haha wish me luck. taking on this project tomorrow to install new shackle hangers

 

Good news. Those are the easiest ones!

Just remember. There are two, I think the rear most ones but not 100%, that are welded on the top side. I hammered forever until I realized they were welded on the top. If you climb underneath it’s obvious which ones are.

Some I ground flat some I didn’t. I think in the end it was easier to just drill them all in stages. Three bits up to 3/8 then the rivets just hammer out really easy.

Unless you have an air chisel or torch. Then it’s different. I did mine cave man style with a drill and hammer.

Good luck.

 

I saw someone used a ball joint press with a modified tip to push the rivets out after they were ground flat. They said it worked well for the crossmember ones.

 

Didn’t even get to cutting the stock hangers. Ran into an issue with my lower shock bolt being bent and the threads being all galled. Took a while to find and replace that as well as the lower shock bushing sleeve which was all mashed for some reason. Anyway, gonna reattempt tomorrow with lessons learned. I bought an air chisel/hammer to see if it’ll help.

 

Gonna tackle the bump stop rivets this afternoon. What do y'all think of center punching the middle of the head and drilling it out with a 1/2 bit and then punch off/out what's left of th rivets?