Rivets or screws

[jeraza]

Recarpeting my Ranger 520 and wanted to get some advice as to weather or not to use old rivet holes and reinstall deck lids with new rivets or just move hinges a little and use ss screws. Any thoughts or first hand experience would be very welcome. Almost forgot about the rub-rail that I’m replacing as well. Same issue ...

[wmitch2]

Hinges to lids--1/4" Aluminum rivets. Hinges to boat--SS screws.

[Bigfish92084]

I had great success using same holes and called Ranger and ordered the exact same rivets they used. If you have the carpet edging strip with the small rivets... for sure buy those from ranger as they are maybe 1/16" inch longer than anything I could find at Ace Hardware. Needed to be long enough to grab the underside of deck. I made a special tool that allowed the rivet gun to fit inside the channel of the carpet edging strip. Saved 5 drilled off rivet heads and epoxy them onto the rivet head. This allowed to push down inside the channel to get a tight rivet connection. See pic.

RivetTool.jpgIMG_3684.jpg

[Bigfish92084]

If any screw holes were stripped out, fill with JB weld and redrill. I would definitely avoid any new holes. I saved my old carpet and was able to find exact location ( easy to find holes by looking at the bottom side of old carpet that was removed ) of previous holes where screws were used. Poked around with a safety pin until hole was found.

IMG_3638.jpg

[Scott S.]

3/16" x 1/2" long, pneumatic rivet gun. You will need about 50 of them. Screws would never hold in the gleg they use for the core support.

[Mj154]

I’m in the middle of a restore and although I haven’t put my hinges and lids back in yet, everything else that I had to drill out I riveted again and it’s all nice and tight. In some spots where I thought the holes may have enlarged a little bit I put those rivets back and and than drilled a new hole somewhere near with another rivet. I’m a novice by all accounts but rivets always seem to hold better than screws in other applications too.

[Scott S.]

Bullets are a pain in the ASS, they pop rivet the hinge to the boat. There's a work around for that......

[ohmike]

Bullets are a pain in the ASS, they pop rivet the hinge to the boat. There's a work around for that......

im doing a carpet job on my 20xd got the front deck and step done..any advice on the deck lids with rivets would be great

[Scott S.]

im doing a carpet job on my 20xd got the front deck and step done..any advice on the deck lids with rivets would be great

I use a short bit in a small to medium size vice grip, and a 3'8" socket on the impact drive. I don't dick with the pop rivets into the glass. It's a pain in the ass, but there isn't much if any room to get a air driven pop rivet gun under the lid, I'm not going to pay for the long nose rivet gun to get in there, no thank you.

[TerrysRanger374V]

374 ranger, they sandwich the doors with the carpet and rivets in the space between the liner, drilled the head off on the doors and got the hinges off, got the carpet off, how do you get the old rivets and washers out of the slot with the carpet in the way and no way to get at them? I would like to finish tis before Tuesday if possible. the hinges are SS so they drill hard if you wanted to make new holes so any help would be great

thank you

[twitch]

If I remember correctly when we did ours back a few years ago, we used an awl or pick type device to twist and pop out the rest of the rivet from that area, you can spread the liner with needle nose or something like that while digging out the remainder of the rivet. Time consuming but can be done