Part of this is just a natural time absorbed thing. Replace the rivets with new ones. Some of the rivet shanks will fall into the boat and become lodged in areas you can not reach. They should not rattle noticably as they will lodge or flow to the sump. Thus you can expect a few to be in the sump. On a 2005 model it could be the actual rivet used on a few boats, as there was a different brand than we specified used for a short bit. We are not remembering that exact date on the rivet swap. Though it was brief on that time period. The rivet shank can be pressed through once you carefully drill the head off. Some of this is from just settling and compression of the rub rail over time due to the thickness, so it may not all be dock rash or boat flex. It could just be an aging process and the sunlight subjected to as well as more heat impacts that. In the north country it seems to be cooling and warming that compresses the rubber bump mouldings. Thus it too have a different flex. The rivets are available through parts, and an entire boat has around 140 to 170 rivets in it depending on the size nad spacing of the insert. Some inserts have come in not drilled exactly to spec of 3-4″, and they have spaced the holes in the insert stiffner out to over 5″ in some models. This makes the loosening worse also. So if you have a spread of over 5″ we would consider an extra rivet hole occasionally. The older boats were not machine screwed together also as this was not done until the flexing, impact and memory of the rub rail was understood. The newer ones have an occasional machine screw where it can be reached. Plus a few of the later models had those protective meausres inadvertently left out, seems someone thought they were smarter than the decision that was made in house, and personally determined that was not necessary. Similar decisions on what was a necessity were made in that case. We would suggest adding a few machine screws to those models. The machine screws, washers and nuts are available through Parts also. BCB
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