Tightening a Rivnut

At the end of the summer my Principia Rex Pro Summer bike developed a rattle. After a bit of investigation it was clear that it was the water bottle cage and no amount of tightening would help as the threaded hole into which it was fitted could clearly be seen moving in the frame. Needless to say I was not best pleased about this. As there was no obvious way to solve this. I found out the fitting was known as a “rivnut” but sill not much help as to how to tighten one. Another expensive tool sprang to mind, until today.

Reading uk.rec.cycling there was a thread that had the solution. (At the time of writing the solution has not yet made it into Google groups).

Get a long bolt that fits the rivnut and a nut for that bolt and a washer. Put the nut on the bolt and spin it up the bolt to the bolt head. Not tight. Then put on the washer and screw the whole thing into the rivnut. Now hold the bolt still with in my case and allen key and then “undo” the nut so that it is pushing down on the frame. This compresses the rivnut and then all is well. It certainly seems to have worked.

Very happy.

Tags: topic:[cycling] topic:[rivnut] topic:[uk.rec.cycling] topic:[Principia]