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Hi, I am about to drill for the Minispares stainless door surround trim and i have photos of the hole positions from various sources and even taken pictures myself so I am nearly good to go. However, the trim area where it clips on to the rivets is offset from centre on the surround trim, so my question is, are the holes offset to one side of the door/window pillars or are the holes central? all the pictures i have seen they look central but just a final sanity check thanks

My opinion this is the worst job ever to carry out on your car .. Unfortunate that i cannot answer your question because i have only used genuine BMC Stainless Outer Trim & then tried to use this BMC Trim with MS Pop Rivets & they are incorrect & mismatched .. so i always save for re-use the old original pop rivet Cups that clip into the BMC Door Trim .. so lets assume your MS Trim & the Pop Rivet Cups are good with each other worth to check? .. I would first put masking tape on the painted Door Frame so i can mark holes & outer trim positions on the Tape as will be needed also protects the Paint..then fit one location Cup into the Door frame to get a datum point with the Outer Trim placed into position then clamping the Outer Trim position with more masking tape .. then measure where the actual pop rivet holes position need to be .. because in my cases that outer trim does not position exactly on center line through all the door frame .. can agree this faffing about is not an easy task but better than drilling holes in the Door Frame and finding out they are positioned wrong.
Dont tell anyone as i have also bonded the Outer Trim into place with one stubborn & slightly bent out of shape Outer Trim that just did not like to be fully secured with those Cups .. bonding worked a treat.

Worth to mention to make sure the Pop Rivets are not too long in their overhang inside the Door Frame otherwise it will be a challenge to get your Window Slider Seals positioned... because the bloody Pop Rivets can stick through too far
Wishing you every success

When I did mine using the original trims I noticed the rivets needed to be offset to match the slot in the trim. so I made a drill jig to do the holes in the frame. If you use the MS pop rivets they protrude into the felt window channels stopping the glass from sliding so I drilled out the rivets from the cups and used some 3mm button head bolts and kaynuts to hold the cups to the frame. I still have the jig and some spare nuts and bolts if you want to borrow them.

Wow that is a great help and exactly what I was after thanks
After offering the trims up on the window though I don’t think they are going to fit well especially at the front corner so I may wait for some originals to come up. It is quite scary committing to the drill

How do we suppose this was done in the factory out of interest?

Presumably they had a jig that fitted over the whole frame to drill the holes, or did they just guess and persuade the trim to fit on the line?

I've recently done a set, and used these brass hand turned ones from Mmachine, they worked well for me.
I too use a small jig to drill them as they should be slightly offset.
Great Idea with the button nuts Bob!

When drilling the bodywork like this what do you guys use for the cut steel hole to stop it rusting?

When I did mine I did it with new doors but even then, I slightly countersunk the holes and after painting the doors sprayed the whole interior plus the inside of the frame with Supertrol. Then riveted the cups in place

If I was doing the same again I'd machine brass (or stainless) cups as per Nick W's - but flat - and sit them on a bit of mastic.

I also learned when fitting the door finishers to push the finisher OUTWARDS when fitting over the cups so that the INNER side of the chrome finisher hooked under the cup and the OUTER edge just clicked/clipped over the cup - and secure. Also made sure that I filed off all the sharp edges at the ends of the chrome finisher too

With regard to the rivet fixings specified in the body service parts list pages as attached, are there any particular reasons why other fixing methods have been used as shown & described in the previous posts instead of using the two types of rivet fixings, 12no. 13H 743 & 8no. 13H 744 as listed.
I’m likely to be fixing my door trims soon but not sure now which method I should use.

If the trim fits well with no tension, then the rivets will do the job. ..but usually the Trims don't fit that well and although you may get it to clip on , it can pull the rivet clean out, as it's a small rivet. Bobs idea will over come this issue

Interesting photos Nick.....is that a Radford or something similar that you are working on ?