Rivets and Adhesives: The New Reality of Auto Body Repair
The materials that make up your vehicle have quietly changed the entire job of collision repair, and the humble rivet sits at the center of it. When Ford put an all-aluminum body on the F-150 back in 2015, it kicked off a shift that most drivers never noticed. Ford sold 765,000 F-150s in the U.S. in 2023 alone, and there are now roughly seven million of these aluminum trucks on the road. That is a lot of vehicles that cannot be fixed the old-fashioned way, with a welder and a hammer.
Aluminum scares a lot of shops. On one aluminum Ford F-250 with damage to the cab corner, a panel about 1.5 millimeters thick, the answer from nearly every technician asked was the same: replace it. When pressed on whether they had the tools and the training to do that replacement, most said they would turn the job away entirely. The truth is the panel was saved with a KECO tab pulling system, no replacement needed. It comes down to two things, proper tools and proper training, and nothing else.
Why Welding Is Giving Way to Bonding
Today's vehicles mix several grades of steel with aluminum, magnesium, plastics, and carbon fiber, and not all of it can be welded. Heat is the enemy here. It weakens high-strength steel and outright destroys ultra-high-strength steel. Honda made this plain when it began using ultra-high-strength steel in the A pillar, B pillar, and rocker reinforcements on the 2013 Accord. The company states that these 1,500 MPa parts must be installed complete, with no sectioning allowed, and that MIG welding on that steel is flat-out prohibited. Do it wrong and you have an unsafe repair, plain and simple.
So the industry leans on adhesive, sometimes called cold bonding. Adhesive has excellent tensile strength and holds up beautifully in a peel test, but it is weak in shear. That is where rivets earn their keep. A blind rivet, a self-piercing rivet, or a spot weld locks the panels against sideways movement so the glue can do its job. Ford uses both self-piercing rivets and blind structural rivets, and after years of teaching the I-CAR rivet bonding class, it is clear most technicians do not understand why blind rivets are there or how to remove and install them correctly.
Where Repairs Go Wrong: Hole Size and Tools
Two numbers matter more than anything: the material thickness and the shank size of the rivet. The vehicle engineers spell out exactly what the repair calls for, and your job is to drill or punch a hole that matches. Get it wrong and you are in trouble. Too big, and the rivet sits loose, the panels shift, and the bond shears apart. Too small, and the metal distorts so the panels never make full contact.
Ford's procedure calls for a 6.5-millimeter drill bit for their blind rivets. In class after class, shops simply do not own one. The closest they have is a quarter-inch bit, and rather than get the right tool, techs will drill the hole out to force the 6.5-millimeter rivet to fit. That is exactly the mistake that leaves the rivet loose and the bond ready to fail.
If the rivet is loose in the hole, the panel will move sideways and the bond will break. That is where all the trouble starts.
The right way is straightforward. Drill the correct 6.5-millimeter hole, use locking pliers to keep the joint tight while you drill, then remove those pliers before setting the rivet so it seats flush. Deburr the hole to clear the aluminum chip. Your rivet gun, whether pneumatic or battery, needs around 3,500 pounds of pulling force to set the fastener properly.
What This Means for You
When you bring a modern vehicle to AW Collision, the shop you choose either has invested in the equipment and OEM training or it has not. Always insist on factory rivets and OEM procedures, because the automaker engineered that joint for a reason. A shop that shortcuts the hole size or reaches for a welder where adhesive belongs is gambling with the structure that protects you in the next crash. The tools exist, the training exists, and a repair done right will hold to pre-loss specifications.
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