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.

Drivers Side Door Alignment - 1963 Corvette

As was the case for the passenger door, the drivers side upper hinge had to be ground and the lower hinge had to be shimmed.  Once we were satisfied with the alignment all 20 hinge bolts were torqued down. 

Now it's time to work on the door to body fitment.  Instead of using Bondo my preference is to build up low areas using fiberglass.  I removed the primer from all the areas that were either mismatched or too low.  Duct tape was placed to channel excess fiberglass resin away from the rest of the car.  

Duct tape works great because fiberglass resin won't stick to it. 

Door gaps were stuffed with strips of foam rubber to prevent resin from going inside the door jamb. 

Fiberglass was then applied and allowed to cure.

Some areas actually bridged the door gap.

The duct tape was removed after the fiberglass cured.

The fiberglass was cut at all the door gaps using our Fein Multimaster tool.  Door gaps were then sanded open to the proper width using a small piece of sheet metal wrapped with sandpaper.

The 2 inch square fiberglass patch in this picture was done over a year ago when we reinstalled the B-pillar.  I ground this area paper thin then used it as a form for the fiberglass we applied today.  Remember, the fiberglass we use is clear which means the patch you see is on the backside.

With today's effort we will only have to use a small amount of Bondo when we prep for paint. 

That's it!  Both doors are done.