dbv1

How do you pop these? I'm on the back too and I don't see any clips holding them or anything. These look just nasty so I got another set.

dbv1

So that's a blind rivet (n90648102) and it will not come out without drilling or cutting. Oh well.

hotrod2448

Mine are ugly too and I came to the same conclusion on it probably not being worth trying to replace them. I sprayed them with a rust penetrant and ran a tap into them but, it was a bit sketchy. It felt like the force required to clean up the threads was on the verge of breaking the tap which would absolutely suck to deal with.

I toyed with the idea of making a thin plastic template to cover the painted area so, I could clamp the rivets with vice grips and drill them out without them starting to spin. Then there would be little bits of them rattling around in the tailgate driving me nuts so, I decided to wait on this project.

twodollardoug

Mine were bad also. I had to clean up the threads on one of them with a tap. Then used antiseeze one the bolts.

dbv1

I'll ask my dealer on how you're supposed to remove these rivets because the shop manual never even mentions them. I'll report back if they know anything.

The reason they used the rivets is probably because the tailgate is aluminum, that rivet nut is steel. I agree, it doesn't look pretty but it shouldn't get worse so long as it's all greased up.

zamorskii

What tool do you install them with? I imagine you'd need some sort of a threaded pin to screw in and then pull with the rivet gun in order to compress the rivet's body in place.

hotrod2448

Not this exact one but, it gets the idea across:

You can also redneck it with just a long bolt and nut if you get desperate. Hold the bolt head in place and turn the nut to compress the body.

jetson8859

I use one similar to this

twodollardoug

That is the same one I have. I used it to tighten up my license plate rivnuts.