Squeezing AN470 AD5 rivets

I have an enlarged hole on my flap brackets so I ordered some AN470-5-9 rivets from Spruce. They look like the rivets I need, but one thing is worrying me. I test squeezed one in some scrap (I cut this one down to a 6 length) and it felt like squeezing butter. Unlike the smaller rivets which I have to give a pretty firm squeeze to. Is this normal with this size rivet? I expected the larger size to take even more oomph on the squeeze. The rivet head has a "01DC" marking on it. The spruce item was "AN470A-5-9 SOLID ALUM RIVET AN470A-5-9"

You got the wrong rivets. Those are soft, you want the AN470AD-5-9 rivets.

Denis,

I ran into the same problem. In fact, with the same size rivet. I ordered AD rivets. AD rivets were indicated on the invoice. The bag said AD. And I used them on the horizontal stabilizer. The rivets felt way too soft. After checking, I found these were A rivets (soft), not the AD rivets I ordered. I contacted ACS and they shipped the correct rivets. Ever since then, my SOP is to look for the little dimple in the rivet before I squeeze or buck. The dimple indicates an AD rivet. No dimple is an A rivet and is very, very soft.

ChiefPilot said:

You got the wrong rivets. Those are soft, you want the AN470AD-5-9 rivets.

Click to expand...

What he said. The "A" rivets are pure aluminum and the "AD" are alloy - much stronger.

As an aside, the "A" rivets work well in fiberglass where you don't have structural issues and you don't want to damage the fiberglass with a hefty squeeze.

Dan

Always check your rivets, Van's has also supplied soft rivet in some kits in the past.

Get that A-material rivet outta there. Shear strength, even though it's bigger in diameter than the AD4 rivet, is about 50lbs less. I have some AN470AD5-8's and I'd be glad to pop a couple in the mail if you don't wanna buy a bunch from Spruce.

They have to have the dimple in the center of the head to be the material that Vans designed for.

I have some AD rivets on order now. Thanks for the help in seeing the difference. Sometimes you get into a hurry in ordering stuff and it's only one letter off.. The rivet in the picture is in some scrap so no need to remove anything from the plane.

driven rivet head size

Looking at the photo, i have to comment. I could be wrong but that shop head appears to be under driven. A miss conception is driving the diameter
to 1.5 the diam. of the shank. and not getting the right driven height.
Please look at the very useful mil. spec. guide on the vans web site. Take special note of table 3. http://vansaircraft.com/public/Specs.htm
Note that according to this spec. there is no max diam. only min. and the height has a min and max. Rivet guides are ok but can be misused. For example, when you measure the diam of a shop head and it doesn?t fit on the rivet guide, one could be misled that the rivet is over driven when in fact it is not. My recommendation is to buy a thousands gage, digital or analog, use the butt end of it to measure the height of the shop head.