Reusing Scrivets

[CMOORESY]

Love em or hate em, they are part and parcel of the fixings used in pretty much every car these days.

Recently I was removing my washer bottle and couldn't get the left hand scrivet back in, as space it tight and the scrivet petals remain splayed after the scrivet has been used once making tucking them all through two slightly misaligned holed with one hand pretty much impossible.

There is however a simple solution to restoring your scrivet petals to the 'as new' profile.

Scrivets are injection molded (or thermoformed ABS) so, if they have been stressed when used (you sometimes see stress whitening on plastics or stretching), with all the petals remaining splayed and difficult to get into the holes again.

Drop them into some boiling water.

As the ABS warms the cold stress tensions are reversed to the original molded profile.

Obviously, sometimes they may be that cold stressed that they dont fully return. In this case, hold them shut and dunk them into some cold water to 'lock in' the closed profile.

Try it. It works. All you need it a Kettle, a cup and a cold water tap.

[macafee2]

after the boiling water I tied mine closed and stuck them in the freezer.
As you say, they can be reused

macafee2

[Jdwoodhou]

Good tip, I always end up mangling mine as they are so tricky to remove. However, there are generic scrivets available on eBay cheaply these days so I keep my originals in reserve and use the pattern ones.

[Arctic]

You could also tie the scrivet petals with some cotton, this holds them in once inserted and the pin pushed home it breaks the cotton and the scrivet will splay out holding the washer bottle in place, but hot water method is good idea never used it but will in the future.