How to use rivet nuts at home or in the car

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  • OVERALL DIFFICULTY INDEX: 2/10
  • IF YOU HAVE NO TOOLS YOU PAY $ 80 TO GET THEM FOR THIS JOB
  • TIME OF INTERVENTION DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING, BUT THIS IS THE FASTEST WAY TO FIT A BLIND NUT
  • YOU SHOULD OBSERVE SAFETY RULES FOR DRILLING HOLES PRIOR TO FITTING THE RIVETS
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What are rivet nuts used for?

Rivet nuts (or nut rivets) are blind fasteners that can be installed by the means of the riveter gun in any metal plate of some 2-3mm thickness. Once fastened, the rivet becomes a nut that is strongly held to the plate and in which you can fit a bolt to fix something as per the below shown examples.
It is designed for low to medium loads, do not consider using it for heavy loads or mechanical components of your car that require high tightening torques like suspension or lower frame parts!

The nut riveter gun

The gun is equipped with two adapters that allow you to use any of the two below fasteners:
  • blind rivets
  • nut rivets
All guns are supplied with a set of threaded rods for different nut sizes, usually from M3 to M10 and their close equivalents in inches for non metric uses.

Using the nut rivets (rivet nuts) at home

This example shows how nut rivets where used to fix decorative brackets to a kitchen steel bench in order to add a wooden top, used as a bar. The steel plates of the bench where drilled with a steel mesh prior to fitting the rivet nut (or nut rivet) with the gun, as shown:
The iron brackets could then be fixed to the nuts with decorative M6 screws.
The wooden top of the bar was then fixed to the brackets with wooden screws and that's it.
No other fastener than the rivet nut would have been more practical in this case.

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Using the nut rivets (rivet nuts) in your car

Rivet nuts are used here to fix the mud guard inside the car fender.
While there are specific plastic fasteners and clips for the inner fender mud-guards, you can also use a nut rivet, but keep in mind that this particular place in the nut is subject to water and mud, thus corrosion. 
Put some grease on the screws prior to fitting them to the nuts you installed.
Nut rivets are much more adequate inside vans or camping cars for fixing things to the vehicle's pillars, which are often already drilled in many places. Just fit rivet nuts wherever you need to fasten something to the concerned pillar or body reinforcement.

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