Pulling Rivnuts without a Rivnut Tool
For my birthday this year (2003) I was fortunate enough to receive a Sealey Rivnut Kit. This excellent piece of kit came highly recommended by several other kit builders as being the best available for continued use. Although the kit is comprehensive, the mandrels supplied are for 3, 4, 5 and 6mm threads and we needed to insert an 8mm Steel Rivnut to replace one that had been fitted too loosely to Simon's Chassis when his front exhaust mount was installed.
Obtaining the Rivnut was easy enough (Namrick 01273 779884) had them in stock for .25p each and the idea was that we insert them with a bolt that we would tighten up with a nut. However, it wasn't as simple as that as no matter how we tried, the Rivnut always revolved in the hole in the chassis and would not 'crimp up'!
Simon (nobody likes a smart arse!) came up with the solution which was to use an old ring spanner as an additional 'spacer' which could be held in place and not allowed to revolve. A more elegant variation was then resolved using a long 8mm bolt, two 8mm washers an oversized nut (10mm), an 8mm nut and three spanners (one for the 10mm oversized nut {A}, one for the 8mm nut {B} and one for the 8mm bolt {C} ).
The following diagram shows the component parts.
Having drilled a suitable hole in the mounting surface, the component parts are assembled as in the diagram above. Nut {A} and bolt {C} are held still by their respective spanners and the Rivnut is deformed and pulled up tight by turning nut {B} clockwise with the third spanner until the Rivnut is installed correctly. You if you cannot see the rear of the Rivnut (for example when installing in a chassis tube), it may be worth using some same thickness material that you can see both sides of and counting the number of turns required to fully compress an identical Rivnut and then repeat the exercise with the real installation
It worked for us!
