Last week my buddy Jeff and I were able to remove the metal shelves from the rear of my van, but a couple of small remnants remained — specifically, two metal brackets that were riveted to the ceiling. In addition to those, toward the rear of the van are another pair of brackets mounted to the wall with rivets, probably designed to hold the jack or something else in place. Over the weekend, I decided to remove the rivets.
As with every van-related project so far, I turned to YouTube to learn how to remove rivets. The simplest method I found involved drilling the center of the rivets out. Using my Ryobi drill and an old drill bit, I put on a pair of safety goggles, aimed for the center of the rivet, and began to drill. After two solid minutes of drilling, nothing had happened.
My first assumption was that I was using the wrong type of drill bit — specifically, I was afraid I was using a bit designed for wood instead of metal. Fortunately for me, Harbor Freight was running a great sale on titanium drill bits (along with moving blankets) over Memorial Day weekend, so I took a break from all the non-drilling and and left to go purchase those items.
Within the hour I was back at it, but unfortunately the new bits didn’t seem to make any difference, at least not at first. While chatting with my friend Sean, he suggested I check to make sure my Ryobi cordless drill was in the “2” setting (for drilling) and not “1” (for driving screws). To be honest I didn’t know my drill had a speed setting — oops! After switching it from “1” to “2”, the drill began to spin twice as quickly, and the new golden bits began to find their way into the center of the rivets.
Well, sort of.
The first bit I chose was too small and had trouble going through the center of the rivet, so I decided to jump to the largest bit in the set. The larger bit not only easily bored through the center of the rivet, but shattered the entire rivet when it plunged into the center hole, sending pieces of metal everywhere. This worked exactly twice; on my third attempt, the end of the bit got caught in the rivet and snapped off. They don’t make titanium like they used to.
The perfect-sized bit turned out to be one a few slots from the largest one in the box. That one was able to drive through the center of the rivet without destroying the rivet itself. All of the drill bits I used turned the center of the rivets into teeny-tiny metal shavings that sprayed out all over the place. I had planned ahead by wearing safety goggles and gloves, but didn’t think about wearing a long-sleeved shirt. After the last rivet had been drilled, I spent the next 10 minutes removing tiny bits of metal from my forearms and the rest of the van. The shavings looked like tiny metal whiskers, and were no fun to remove from my skin.
Each project I tackle on the van involves a combination of research, preparation, and execution. For drilling out the rivets, I watched an hour’s worth of YouTube videos, spent an hour driving to and from Harbor Freight, and only a few minutes actually drilling out the rivets. What I like the most about stuff like this is if I ever have to drill out rivets again, I can skip the first two steps!