In the car shop, brake riveting tools are a lot like Sony Walkmans. Because of new technology, these machines are almost gone. All but a few brakes these days have been glued to the lining. Large machinery, like the overhead cranes that load and unload ships, has brakes that can be both glued and riveted.
If you use any kind of brake-riveting tool, you’ll find these parts:
Anvil: There’s a piece of metal where the head of the rivet goes, and this is where it is. It doesn’t make sense for the anvil to be very big, either, because rivets aren’t very big.
Roller: This is the tool that comes down over the straight rivet and rolls its edges, like rolling the top of a sock down your leg. It’s usually about 4 to 6 inches (10.2-2 cm) long. Metal plates are held together by the rolled edge.
Rivet: If you don’t have one, you can’t use a tool to rivet. On one end, there’s a head, and a tube comes out of it. The tube is what rolls down.
Brake and lining: These two pieces of curved metal have the same holes drilled for the rivets to be put in.
Rolling down the edges and making the rivet body bigger with a hammer or a press is what keeps the brake and lining together. Now that we’ve learned the basics, we can see how these things work in the real world.
Brake Riveting Tool Uses
If you want to rivet your brakes, you’ll still find a lot of different tools for that.
If someone has a repair project in their attic, they’ll most likely use a hand set. These tools are small and usually hold on to a workbench, but they can also be used on their own. The rivet is set on the anvil, the roller is poised above it, and a few good hammer blows roll the edges. If you want to make something cheap and easy, this isn’t very efficient, and it doesn’t hold very well.
Foot stomps and pneumatic machines are bigger, freestanding riveters that you can use. You use your arm to roll the rivets with a hand set like you would with a machine instead. Foot stomping moves gears and a chain, which lowers the roller onto the rivet that is on the anvil when you press a lever on the machine with your foot and move it. A pneumatic machine works and looks the same as a regular machine, but it doesn’t have gears.
The most recent riveting tools are hydraulic, and they use pressure sensors to make sure they do a good job. A rivet feeder makes the process faster, and it can even be set up for different types of brakes. Custom brake businesses can change the linings on 700 to 800 brakes a day with a machine like this. They can use it to do this on everything from long-haul trucks to vintage cars.
This tool is easy to use, but there are a few things that we can tell you about on the next page.
Tips for Using a Brake Riveting Tool
There are two types of rivets that are used in these tools: solid and hollow rivets. Their heads have a hole that goes through them, even though they’re hollow. This is because they’re made of metal. When you roll the solid rivets, there’s a small hole at the end for rolling. The head and most of the shaft are both made of metal. There are two ways to use the brake riveting tool: one is to roll one end and make it bigger. The other is to make the body of the rivet bigger.
People need to make sure they pick the right length of rivet. It has to go through the brakes and linings, but not too much, of course. It will make the rivet roll twice if there is too much metal above the brake. You can see this by looking closely at a rivet that has been done wrong. A mistake like this will not keep the lining from getting sucked in very well.
Take riveted brakes to a shop so the linings can be changed. This is the easiest and safest way to do it. You can also use these simple steps to do small jobs on vintage cars. They will help you connect the lining to the brakes, so you can drive again.
