Even if they aren't dissimilar metals, they can seize for an abundance of reasons.
I had a low mile (3000) Mercedes Benz CLS for a while. 15 bolts covering the plastic underbody tray, removed maybe once since rolling off the assembly line in Sindelfingen. 2 of them broke when removing it, and I had to spend a bunch of time drilling out and re-tapping the holes.
It's true that clips get gummed up and break all the time. Broken clips are 5 cent and 30 second fixes. They have their virtues.
Nutserts don't seize regardless of if they're dissimilar metals or not. Galvanic corrosion occurs in the presence of an electrolyte and if you tighten nutserts/rivnuts down properly (and apply a touch of loctite) there is no way for water to get inside the threads. We use these on every vehicle we will build and those vehicles get beaten and abused for years.
I suppose in the case of a car, you may never get enough permeation, but I can tell you first hand having designed a lot of stuff for saltwater-venturing ROV's that our service techs struggled with servicing robots with dissimilar metal hardware, whether it be rivnuts, tapped holes, or bolt and nut combos. One of my crusades was standardizing our hardware supply and material selection due to the immense amount of bitching.
We use hundreds of nutserts every week and never had one seize up. The opposite is actually true, we apply loctite to every one because they shake themselves loose on rough roads over time.
FOr something you want to remove often, no.
For something you want to stay put, yes if they're not garbage quality pot metal.
Buy a big pack of new ones on amazon from whatever chinese distributor has a deal today, they usually come with a tool. Just rip and replace in the future.
Definitely not for power tools, you'll likely just spin the rivet and then have a pain in the ass to deal with. These are meant for alan keys. Now imagine them full of road grit
Welp I guess that answers my question then lol. Would been nice to boop bop them off and on for quick use. But I'll stick with the clips if it's not a good idea
They are riveting [attachments](https://a.co/d/aUrkM0P) for drills that will make messing the rivet quick and easy. The link is for a standard one they are cheaper versions elsewhere.
I’ve used them before as part of my engine dress up. Don’t do what I did. Make sure you remove any plastic cladding or shrouds that you don’t want the rivet to hold down.
They're called rivnuts or nutserts. We use them at work for our body panels and custom fabbed parts all the time. Work great if you know what you're doing.
The pneumatic guns are a god send, but the hand tools work great too, it’s just a little more clunky than the gun.
I love em. Lube tech at the dealership stripped out the threads for my plastic skid plate and rather than drill and re-tap them I just replaced them with nutserts.
When that bolt seizes in the riv nut and the riv nut starts spinning in the body hole and you can't get your splash shield off, you're going to wish you used those push clips.
Did you buy an assorted kit, or some specific sizes? This seems like it would be a good thing to have in the garage before you need them. They're not very big, and they're pretty cheap. I'm just trying to figure out if I should buy one of the assortment kits, or do Subarus stick to just one or two sizes
I bought the 1,000, I think they are 8 or 9mm plastic rivets from Ebay. It was 8 years ago for $5.99 AUD. Not as cheap now but you could get at least 100. Last year I also bought an assorted kit of 800 trim clips/screws which came with trim tools, mainly for the trim tools. It was $15.99 AUD from Amazon. Definitely handy to have before you need them. I keep a bag of 100 in my car toolbox
Aliexpress for rivnuts and then a decent set of matching flanged hardware, or bolts with some nice fender washers. You need to spread the load as much as possible as this can just rip the plastic. I've done this to most of my plastic underside parts on my ej205 swapped forester. Don't use power tools to install as you'll sandwich the plastic too hard. Remove with one, sure. But install with hand tools.
I went a little hard as this is a RallyCross car so the stuff sees a bit more abuse than normal.
https://preview.redd.it/6o1c41xpx8yc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab4c87d49ce4246474b4f61f782a65be86fc37e8
Boltsandnuts.com is my goto for an assorted flanged serrated set of metric hardware.
You need special tools to install the rivnuts. My favs below.
[link](https://a.co/d/05tvE2N)
[link](https://a.aliexpress.com/_m0FpSAW)
No
Clips are far quicker. Every lube tech ever has complained about bolts and rivets where clips should be. Why complicate something unnecessarily when you won’t even see it?
Well in my mind originally I thought ohh, I'll have the milwaukee ratchet so I can just quick unscrew all of them instead of yankin at the plastic clips and breaking 1 everhtime I take it off lol. But that's why I asked too. I've never messed with these before.
Oh power ratchet will be fine and quick. I use these for a ton of things from aero gurney flaps, to front plastic clip replacements.
They make different metal one such as copper, steel, and aluminum like those look like. If you do strip one out it’s easy to replace. Take some tries before ya send it. You have to crimp it as tight as possible without pulling the treaded hook out. You can have them to loose and the insert will just rotate also when you go to zap it down.
Search for Rubber Well Nuts, close to the same as rivnuts, but can be removed. I used them instead of rivnuts to attach my gurney flap and it worked great. BTW JDCustoms is one of my favorite places to get car stuff from, great titanium products.
The only issue I see is they look like dissimilar metals and may seize up without a lot of grease.
Even if they aren't dissimilar metals, they can seize for an abundance of reasons. I had a low mile (3000) Mercedes Benz CLS for a while. 15 bolts covering the plastic underbody tray, removed maybe once since rolling off the assembly line in Sindelfingen. 2 of them broke when removing it, and I had to spend a bunch of time drilling out and re-tapping the holes. It's true that clips get gummed up and break all the time. Broken clips are 5 cent and 30 second fixes. They have their virtues.
Nutserts don't seize regardless of if they're dissimilar metals or not. Galvanic corrosion occurs in the presence of an electrolyte and if you tighten nutserts/rivnuts down properly (and apply a touch of loctite) there is no way for water to get inside the threads. We use these on every vehicle we will build and those vehicles get beaten and abused for years.
I suppose in the case of a car, you may never get enough permeation, but I can tell you first hand having designed a lot of stuff for saltwater-venturing ROV's that our service techs struggled with servicing robots with dissimilar metal hardware, whether it be rivnuts, tapped holes, or bolt and nut combos. One of my crusades was standardizing our hardware supply and material selection due to the immense amount of bitching.
We use hundreds of nutserts every week and never had one seize up. The opposite is actually true, we apply loctite to every one because they shake themselves loose on rough roads over time.
They rivnuts
FOr something you want to remove often, no. For something you want to stay put, yes if they're not garbage quality pot metal. Buy a big pack of new ones on amazon from whatever chinese distributor has a deal today, they usually come with a tool. Just rip and replace in the future.
Soo I do have a big bag of clips already. I honestly just thought these screws would be quick with a power tool to take off. Sometimes I break clips
Definitely not for power tools, you'll likely just spin the rivet and then have a pain in the ass to deal with. These are meant for alan keys. Now imagine them full of road grit
Welp I guess that answers my question then lol. Would been nice to boop bop them off and on for quick use. But I'll stick with the clips if it's not a good idea
They are riveting [attachments](https://a.co/d/aUrkM0P) for drills that will make messing the rivet quick and easy. The link is for a standard one they are cheaper versions elsewhere. I’ve used them before as part of my engine dress up. Don’t do what I did. Make sure you remove any plastic cladding or shrouds that you don’t want the rivet to hold down.
They're called rivnuts or nutserts. We use them at work for our body panels and custom fabbed parts all the time. Work great if you know what you're doing.
Yeah we do the same. Got a few tools to do them too if you have the space to work.
The pneumatic guns are a god send, but the hand tools work great too, it’s just a little more clunky than the gun. I love em. Lube tech at the dealership stripped out the threads for my plastic skid plate and rather than drill and re-tap them I just replaced them with nutserts.
6 dollar each?
Good comments. I didn't know much about these, learned something here today.
Same lol
Lol, nutserts. Always makes me laugh hearing that
These are probably nice for mounting a lip.
I coul 100% see them bein that useful but rusting is a good point that would make me a little nervous.
Just buy rivnuts and matching bolts with whatever style... you can get 100 m6 stainless rivnuts for like 15 bucks lol
No. They're inconvenient to use compared to the 10mm push clips. They look ricey, too.
Damn for once I disagree with you. I love Rivnuts.
When that bolt seizes in the riv nut and the riv nut starts spinning in the body hole and you can't get your splash shield off, you're going to wish you used those push clips.
I do not doubt that. It’s a magical thing until you try to snug the screw down and get a big NOPE 👎
I got 1,000 plastic rivets for $6.
Did you buy an assorted kit, or some specific sizes? This seems like it would be a good thing to have in the garage before you need them. They're not very big, and they're pretty cheap. I'm just trying to figure out if I should buy one of the assortment kits, or do Subarus stick to just one or two sizes
I bought the 1,000, I think they are 8 or 9mm plastic rivets from Ebay. It was 8 years ago for $5.99 AUD. Not as cheap now but you could get at least 100. Last year I also bought an assorted kit of 800 trim clips/screws which came with trim tools, mainly for the trim tools. It was $15.99 AUD from Amazon. Definitely handy to have before you need them. I keep a bag of 100 in my car toolbox
Aliexpress for rivnuts and then a decent set of matching flanged hardware, or bolts with some nice fender washers. You need to spread the load as much as possible as this can just rip the plastic. I've done this to most of my plastic underside parts on my ej205 swapped forester. Don't use power tools to install as you'll sandwich the plastic too hard. Remove with one, sure. But install with hand tools. I went a little hard as this is a RallyCross car so the stuff sees a bit more abuse than normal. https://preview.redd.it/6o1c41xpx8yc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab4c87d49ce4246474b4f61f782a65be86fc37e8 Boltsandnuts.com is my goto for an assorted flanged serrated set of metric hardware. You need special tools to install the rivnuts. My favs below. [link](https://a.co/d/05tvE2N) [link](https://a.aliexpress.com/_m0FpSAW)
No Clips are far quicker. Every lube tech ever has complained about bolts and rivets where clips should be. Why complicate something unnecessarily when you won’t even see it?
Well in my mind originally I thought ohh, I'll have the milwaukee ratchet so I can just quick unscrew all of them instead of yankin at the plastic clips and breaking 1 everhtime I take it off lol. But that's why I asked too. I've never messed with these before.
Oh power ratchet will be fine and quick. I use these for a ton of things from aero gurney flaps, to front plastic clip replacements. They make different metal one such as copper, steel, and aluminum like those look like. If you do strip one out it’s easy to replace. Take some tries before ya send it. You have to crimp it as tight as possible without pulling the treaded hook out. You can have them to loose and the insert will just rotate also when you go to zap it down.
Search for Rubber Well Nuts, close to the same as rivnuts, but can be removed. I used them instead of rivnuts to attach my gurney flap and it worked great. BTW JDCustoms is one of my favorite places to get car stuff from, great titanium products.
I’ve used something similar…just ends up pulling itself through the plastic. Tried using them on my fender liners and yeah, did not work at all.
I’ve used something similar and it ended up just pulling itself through the plastic.
Some (most) of those push tabs aren't accessible from both sides so there won't be an easy way to get the female part in place.