Thread: What happened to your D3/D4 today?

Originally Posted by josh.huber

Yeah John, it was that size originally, It fitted to a Drifta DOT camper, Gumtree special, i didn't modify the length just the width. They are a great item. I think i could do the whole job in a couple hours if i did it again.

Jeffster, mine was riveted on 2 of the 5 cross bars, i was going to stick with the clamps but the spacing didn't work, when i looked at the photos of the 1200 rack it had 4 planks and i couldn't see the clamps in any, i put 2 rivets in the back of every plank at every cross bar, leave the rear cross piece to last, my planks were full of stainless rivet heads, drove me insane the alloy rivets i used didn't shoot the ball into the tracks.

Curious if rivnuts would have made the job easier?

Originally Posted by John_D4

Curious if rivnuts would have made the job easier?

I can’t see the point in rivnuts. Once you have it how you want it you won’t need to unbolt the slats.

Originally Posted by DiscoJeffster

I can’t see the point in rivnuts. Once you have it how you want it you won’t need to unbolt the slats.

Nutserts, unlike rivets, will not work loose from vibration on corrugations.

One only has to look at a Defender or Series that’s done some serious off-road work to see the stretched/missing rivets.

A Nutsert with a loctited in bolt will not suffer the same issue.

Originally Posted by John_D4

Curious if rivnuts would have made the job easier?

They would make it significantly stronger/more resilient.

Originally Posted by Tombie

They would make it significantly stronger/more resilient.

Hmmm. Rivets hold most planes together quite successfully and larger ones hold up the Empire State Building. While there are grades of rivets obviously, for the task at hand that Josh did, IMO rivets were more than suitable and simpler. I don’t intend to argue the point. If you want to use rivnuts you’re more than welcome. I wouldn’t waste my time getting my rivnuts out for that job unless there was some config benefit for me to remove a slat on occasion.

I am constantly replacing the "pop" rivets on my 101.

Al rivnuts are quite weak so prefer to use steel ..but requires better tool to do the job adequately ie not an EBay special.

Originally Posted by INter674

Al rivnuts are quite weak so prefer to use steel ..but requires better tool to do the job adequately ie not an EBay special.

True... I think I paid over $300 for mine when I purchased it 10+ years ago.