2016 Classic Roof Rivets

[Starcraft91]

New to Airstream with a rivet question. I have looked at several posts about rivets and now have a question. I have been chasing a roof leak on my 2016 Classic, I finally removed the front overhead cabinet to locate the leak and noticed that all of the exterior front roof panels use Olympic rivets instead of buck rivets. I then moved to the back, removed the speakers in the cabinet and all of the rear exterior panels use Olympic rivets. So is this correct? Thank you for the help.

[rmkrum]

That’s a bit odd. Unless the Airstream you have had some serious shell exterior repairs those should all be bucked rivets.

Olympic rivets are a type of “pop” rivet with a tightly fitting mandrel used to pull the rivet and three ‘wings’ that expand in the interior space. Is that what you are seeing?

The second question is “were you the first owner and did you buy it new?” Or did the dealer repair some damage?

This is rather odd as Airstreams usually have bucked rivets throughout all areas the exterior shell, and conventional pop rivets holding interior aluminum in place only.

Something is not as it seems here...or as it should be.

[Starcraft91]

Thank you for the reply - I am the second owner. Based on your advise I contacted the original selling dealer to check the VIN against any work - besides a few minor repairs over a few years nothing linked to the roof rivets or leaks. I emailed the original owner and they said they did not have anything repaired on the roof. I went back out to look further and the rivets are definitely Olympic rivets. Additionally along the left front curved window the first half of the horizontal row is buck rivets then switching to Olympic - it looks like a switch during assembly. From just looking all of the shaved rivets look very uniform so if it was a repair someone performed a good job cosmetically. So for the leak - on both sides of the front center aluminum piece rivets 17 and 18 counting from the window up leak on both sides - basically at the center of the roof curve. I will assume the Olympic rivets could not pull tight enough to seal the curve. So the big question, drill and replace the few leaking rivets or since I have the entire front cabinet out replace all of the rivets with buck rivets? Thank you for the thoughts.