Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

My walls are in good shape on my cruiser, I'm replacing the carpet and there is a piece of L shaped trim that goes along the base of the walls inside the cabin over the carpet. It screws into the floor and rivets into the wall. I'd like to take the trim off to make replacing The carpet easier and neater, the rivets that go into the wall look pretty burly, the same rivets that are used for the entire cabin. If I take those rivets out is it a problem to use the same hole with a new rivet? Should I just fill the old holes with epoxy or something and drill new holes to put the rivets and trim back in? Or should I not mess wth it and try to push the carpet underneath the trim?

Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks!

Drill the rivet heads out, tap the rest of the rivet through the hole. The holes will be the same size if done right, so no need to fill and drill new holes.

Thanks BMR, I haven't taken anything apart yet, but I'm a little confused in these rivets (2001 party cruiser). It doesn't appear they go all way through the board? I don't see them coming out of the other side of the aluminum that hold the board in. The rivet heads also look different then the normal pop rivet I'm used to, I'm assuming these are a different type? Maybe something stronger?

When I was planning my underskinning, I learned that there are quite a few different styles of rivets. When I worked on airplanes, we used only Cherry Aerospace rivets. Others on this blog convinced me to use (pricey) Magnaloc Structural Rivets for my underskinning. You might want to try a Google search for rivets where you can find pics and descriptions of the various types.

If the rivets don't go completely thru the backing metal, they might be aluminum drive rivets.

Thanks, those drive rivets sound like they may be it. I've done several searches looking for the same image of the heads on my rivets with no luck. Here is a picture of the ones on my boat.