Fan Rivets WTB

[Classic]

This could get interesting.......I'm off to get the popcorn.

[Cairns888]

Come on Tony, give us a few back. You would have many.

[Classic]

My granny always said, " if you don't have enything nice to say, than don't say it"

[SM911]

Clearly your granny wasn’’t an aircraft mechanic Tony - unlike those other rat bags

[72_sporto]

rivets too sm.jpg

My mate Ray, who runs the AW139 chopper simulator at Brissie airport, found me a bunch of 4.78mm dia rivets for my fan and I picked up 8mm and 9mm "snap" tools from ebay. I tried to manually "set" a couple of them without success. The rivets just bent over. Has anyone done this successfully, themselves? How did you do it? Do I need a hydraulic press?

[Kane k]

The rivets must be the right length to form the correct tail. Sounds like the rivets are too long if they are bending over. You will require around 4mm to stick out the end of the hole.
Rivets come in many different lengths. You will need a rivet gun and dolly too install correctly. You can also install with a engineers hammer, long as the head of the rivet is backed with a surface plate or dolly,

[72_sporto]

I have about 6mm protruding and was using a dolly. (No jokes about my love life, please.) My guess is that 4.78 (3/16) is too loose and that the original ones were exactly 5mm. Also not sure if the type of alloy in aircraft rivets is much harder than the originals...

[Kane k]

Try filing the length back a little, then install. 6mm sticking out is to much.

[9er]

You could also try centre drilling it, that would encourage it to mushroom.

Either way I wouldn't be happy with a rerivet job on my fan

[72_sporto]

You could also try centre drilling it, that would encourage it to mushroom.

Either way I wouldn't be happy with a rerivet job on my fan

Not sure if I follow you Chris. Do you prefer the c/s screw option?

I'm going to try annealing the ends next.

[Cairns888]

Isn’t the tail length supposed to be 1.5 times the diameter? I can’t remember that far back.
Just touch it with the river gun whilst applying firm pressure with the gun. Touching it can help as you can see which way the rivet is mushrooming over and you can then pause and adjust the dolly to suit.
0.5 diameter thickness on mushroom and 1.5 diameter width of final product.

You can also get countersunk solid pop rivets as well.

this isn’t turning into a how many men does it take to change a light bulb joke is it?

[Cairns888]

[Cairns888]

270A2309-282E-483A-AB27-554607F66902.jpeg

[Kane k]

this isn’t turning into a how many men does it take to change a light bulb joke is it?

LoL use that one daily.