How to Install Rivets

Okay so Ford Motor Company, they used a bunch of different fasteners. They used different ways to fix things together and what I'm gonna cover with you is aircraft style rivets and what that entails is a solid head rivet that actually goes over and it has a hollow tube in the center. And you're gonna be able to peen this over. Well, you can't just use an air chisel or air hammer or whatever you wanna call it. What happens is, this has a longer stroke and you can't control the length of the stroke and it'll just beat the part up. So anyway, you don't wanna use an air hammer to compress a rivet like this. They make these in all different shapes and sizes, different lengths, find them on the internet. The place that I get these from is in Westland, Michigan, it's U Rivet Company is the name of it. They have all different lengths and styles, it's used mostly in aircraft, but they also use em in automotive. Ford Motor Company used em in the ram air ducts on this '71 51. They used them right here. They used them on heater cases to put the two heater case halves together. And sometimes you gotta separate the case halves to fix stuff or replace doors, so I use em on the heater case and I use em on the ram air actuator. I'm actually gonna demonstrate how to use em on this clutch fork. So this is what the head of the rivet looks like installed. And what this tool, this is an air rivet gun, aircraft rivet gun, it has a shorter stroke, will peen these over and give you the factory style fit. What I got, this clip was broken on the back here and that's the reason why we're doing this. Cause the clip was broke in half and the fork was flopping around inside of the bell housing. They give you these little tiny nylon locking nuts and you can tell the difference in diameter. I don't think you wanna use that in your car. So those are junk, I'm gonna throw them away. So what I'm gonna do, is I'm not gonna use this. You use the aircraft rivet gun. This came from Aircraft Tool supply, it's 110$, is what I paid for it. And I got a couple of different bits with it. This one has a centering piece in it. And this is what centers it onto the rivet and pushes it in. And this is what's called a bucking bar. This is something, it's made out of real hard steel. It's dished out and what that does, is it accepts the head of the rivet so it sits in there and kinda lines it up. So all I'm gonna do is come down on top of it and press this rivet down and crush it to join these two pieces together. And that's just the way it came from the factory. So very very simple. Set it in there like that. Connect my air hose. Center it over top of it and give it a real short burst of air. There you go. All right now I'm gonna go ahead and do the other one. and then that's all it takes to secure that clip will not come loose, will not vibrate loose and this is the correct size and I do the same thing with the ram air actuators. I just put the bucking bar underneath it. I have to take these two pieces in half and I put the bar underneath there. So I'll take this out, send it out, have it replated the correct CAD, clear CAD and then I'll put the new rivets in and it'll look just like it did from the factory.