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I highly recommend you get in touch with Bruce Blevins in flint Michigan. He runs a machining business and reproduces quite a lot of items for 33-34 packards. He also has a good stock of spare parts and parts cars.

Good luck!

Hello All; The first person I e-mailed was Bruce as he reproduces so many great items to keep our Packards on the road. Second was Fred at Max's, and on down the list. At this point I am looking for a rivet that will work with a sleeve as O-D suggested. I have the .250 brass rod for the sleeve and if I can not find a .140 rivet will look for some .375 stock and start to work. I just hate to send the time when I have so many projects going. Thanks Dell ---- Sorry my art work is not great, I just took a pix of my rough notes

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What's the stub end like, solid or drilled hollow to facilitate forming a head?

I looked for about three hours for the same rivet for my 901. I finally gave up and made 20 from 3/8" brass rod. It took less time to make them than I spent looking for them. See my blog post number 30. After making several and measuring with a digital calipers I made a template that I could hold up to the side to measure my progress. The first one took about 15 minutes but the last ones were less than 10 minutes. I was using a small jewelers lathe. As you can see they vary, but they are basically out of sight except for the head.

Good Luck

To answer O-D's question about the end of the rivet, I don't know for sure as I took the car to my friends paint shop for him to touch up the 35 year old paint and went on vacation. My friend called me and said he was going to paint the car as he didn't like the way it looked-he is a good friend. I I will take Marstons advice and buy some larger brass. Thanks all, will post some pix of what I make.

Dell,

I made mine drilled. I had problems with the stub end splitting even with annealing them. Therefore after putting them I place a washer on the stub. I then put a small bead of solder the stub end to hold the washer on.

I think the solder method should work just fine. One way I've found to successfully and gently swedge the end of drilled rivets is to make a little conical die and use it on one face of a pair of Vise-Grips and apply pressure very gently. Works best if the drilled hole in the end of the rivet is very shallow.

I solved my rivet problem, it is not identical to what Packard did. I drilled and turned some brass stock for a sleeve to replace the solder, as I was looking on ebay for rivets I found some brass bolts (I have always called them sex bolts) which had the correct diameter. As the price was 99 cents each it seamed to good to pass up even if they came from China. I think they worked quite well as a replacement. Always seams hard to attach pix's, I guess they must be to big.

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This is really a sad story. If the doors weren't being plated I would just mask the stuff and leave the backside hood color. Nobody is going to bitch about the backside of the doors and even if they did you could color them with an air brush. There are a variety of low tension tapes available today that will not mar a painted finish.