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Showing posts with label Rivet Nuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rivet Nuts. Show all posts

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Rivet Nuts

Shop time remains limited and will stay that way until October or November.  For those of you that insist I post something every couple weeks or so I offer this nugget of information about a pretty cool tool.

Have you ever tried to tighten a molding, sill plate, chrome trim piece or something similar only to find that the hole for the screw had stripped out?  Options were to either use a bigger screw, goop up the existing hole with something and hope the screw holds, or just push the screw into the hole and hope it stayed there.  Now there's another option and it's called a rivet nut.  Below is a Rivet Nut kit that I bought at Tacoma Screw.  There are other manufactures as well.


It's a pretty simple process.  The stripped hole is drilled out to a size that accommodates the rivet nut you want to use.


5 different sizes came in my kit.  This rivet nut is steel but other materials are also available.


The rivet nut is screwed onto the tool then inserted into the drilled hole.  The tool is squeezed until the backside of the rivet nut mushrooms.  Unlike a pop rivet gun, nothing pops or breaks though. 


The rivet nut ends up flush on the outside...



and it mushrooms on the backside.  Here is an example of one I used on a flat washer. 


This thing works so well I decided to use rivet nuts for the whole upper door molding on the drivers side door.


10 minutes later I had the molding installed and it's very secure.  I'll do the other side as well.

I am sure I'll be using rivet nuts at several locations, especially when we start the interior trim pieces.

As always, thanks for watching.