I know Larry, it makes me throw-up too! But it works great, especially when you’re on the river.
Back to the heat shield. Thanks to Bill Wayman’s advice I took some 3M Strip Caulking, rolled it into 4 50-cent sized balls and squished and flattened
it onto the topside of the heat shield where the holes in the car pan were. Then I spayed some kitchen non-stick onto the bottom of the car so the caulking would not stick to the car but stayed on the heat shield. Lined up the heat shield and pushed quite hard to force the caulking into the old rivet holes.
This then produced 4 little tits in the caulking and once out from under the car, I took a punch and marked the heat shield in the 4 places I wanted rivets that would line up with the factory holes in the pan Then I drilled the holes for the 3/16" rivets. Nice and neat.
I slid back under the car and pop riveted the heat shield to the car pan. The holes were perfectly aligned and they went right in! Here are the final pics of the new heat shields. Recall if you will than my 3.8 has a 4.2 gearbox in it, so this arrangement is like a 4.2 car because of the gearbox.
The large round hole in the aft heat shield has no purpose that I can discern, so I have some wood stove cement (for sealing flue pipes and such) that I will put a bit of aluminum tape, cut to size, in the hole and fill it with the furnace cement. I’ll then cover that patch with another piece of aluminum tape. I’ll show a pic whenever I get that done. Now back to that gas tank so, like Joey, I can butcher my hands some more.
