The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Dzus???

Needing Dzus fasteners for a project I'm working on to attach panels to the frame.
I'm having one ell of a time finding any consistency from any of the suppliers and
I've been looking for weeks. Even the manufacturer lacks any useful information
or discriptions for the application and accusation of items. DFCI Solutions was
aquired by SouthCo a few years back and they are now the mfg and distributor
of Dzus.
One of the main items that troubles me, is the buttons that are sold by almost all
of the vendors, speed shops, aircraft suppliers and such, have a straight shank.
Turn this button out and the button falls on the ground. In commercial aircraft
the button shank is recessed and is retained by a crush sleeve or crush washer.
I can't seem to find any instructions let alone the hardware for this type of use.
So......any advice, suggestions, direction from "experienced" users of Dzus
fasteners would really be appreciated.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Hello, Denny,

I do not know if any of these would meet your needs: quarter turn fasteners

I have not bought or used any. My COE's floor panels (and maybe "inner fender" panels) supposedly used them, but they were all missing.

Good Luck & Best Regards,

Tim

Aircraft Spruce should have everything you need. They are a reputable supplier.

Aircraft Spuce

They have instructions in their catalog: e.g. Dzus

If you need more, I have a couple of books (Firewall Forward, The Sportplane Builder). I can check.

Thank, Gord

Nice documentation.

https://www.southco.com/static/Literature/D4.en.pdf this and Gords link should get you rollin.

Southco called them "retainers". Seems like Spruce calls them "grommets". The retainer is pressed/squeezed so it deforms into a recess/undercut on stud shank and retains it. I think you already know that. You just need to know the names, part numbers, instructions and where to buy? Hope the links help you as much as the many times you have helped us all.

How does one pronounce Dzus?
Never mind. I looked it up. William Dzus, an American of Ukrainian descent who invented this fastener pronounces it "Zues" . The "D" is silent.
There, you see, one need not be a big time Arizona rancher to be a historical aficionado.
Carl

Thanks Gord, Don't know why I couldn't find that sheet. I just placed an order with
them for a bunch of AN-3 fittings earlier this week. I have dealt with Aircraft Spruce
in the past because I scratch built a Pitts S1D and a Wag-A-Bond in the past.

Tks bart but that's cornfusing and I do have SouthCo's D4 sheets but can't find any where
to order from them. E-mailed them and got a reply telling me to contact their inside sales.
I was looking for a catalog or brochure or a local dealer.
dg

If you have built a couple of a/c I imagine you are an EAA member. I bet that there's a couple of experts in your local chapter who can help out or lend you tools. I had an EAA friend drop by one day. He was horrified that I was using AN fittings on a car (sacrilege!) . I told him that they were recycled parts and he calmed down.

Huh? I almost prefer AN (JIC) fittings on my car! My fleet is full of the JIC (steel) versions for hydraulic and other stuff.

Come on Carl.....you've been around long enough to know that.
When I was a kid back in the 50's, there were ton and I mean
tons, millions of tons of Army surplus around. darn near every
town had a surplus store and you could buy hardware, likeDzus
fasteners for penny's. I spent a week up at Oshkosh, WI with the
EAA air convention for 20 years running. That's when I was into
the homebuilt airplane fad. There was a HUGE "Fly Market", their
version of a flea market, on the field that ran the whole week. I
used to spend a couple hours a few days I was up there picking
thru the surplus items. I'm just now running low on the Dzus hardware
that I stocked up on.
Yes Gord, EAA and IAC member for a quarter century. Gave it all up
a few years ago. Got tired of chasing a dream. Besides, I flew the daylights
our of the Pitts I built and actually got kind of tire of the whole business and
felt the need to move on to something different. Life's to short to focus on
just one thing for the whole run.
With a lot of searching I've been finding enough info to copy some of the
tools I need. I don't have any of the connections or flying buddies I did
20 years ago, they've all died off by now. My main question was about
The studs that do and do not have the recess. I've finally dug out the
info that I need. When SouthCo acquired DFCI they of course change
all the part numbers pertaining to size, style, etc and it's confused
the selection even more that it was. So, I'm zeroing in on the new
numbers and even found drawings of the setting tools at the old
DFCI site.
Oh, and the sacrilege bit....DFCI was offering a line of fasteners for
automotive use called RaceX for a long time. And they've been used
on almost all professionally built race cars since they flooded the market
after WWII. There's a story about Frank Kurtis out in California blowing
his top when he walked thru the shop and found one of his employees
using them on a new car they were building. Didn't take more than a
few days before all the drawings were changed and all the Kurtis Midgets
were built with Dzus buttons on them.

And Mark....I believe the JIC standard is only for fluid couplings, not
quarter turn fasteners. I offer a quote: "JIC fittings are dimensionally
identical to AN (Army-Navy) fittings, but are produced to less exacting
tolerances and are generally less costly."
Thanks for participating guys,
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Oh yes, I might add, I'm using these on the all aluminum body for the
Cyclekart that I'm building, which is a 3/4 scale copy of a Riley Brooklands
grand prix car from the late 20's.
dg

Here is what is at issue, DG. I grew up closer to the Arctic Circle than where you live before I moved to below the Mason-Dixon Line. First in Northern Virginia, then to Southeast Virginia.
That represents a huge shift iv culture, dialect, attitude, and education background.
When I first arrived to Virginia from the great white north, I stopped at a fast food joint, ordered my food, and when the girl told me how much I owed, I could not understand the words which she used for money. "Fah dollah and teen ceent." she said. I handed her a ten and hoped for the best.
So taking this into account, you can imagine how many pronunciations one would run into for the word "Dzus" around here. Most would begin with, "dag gummed".
Carl

I hope he was joking. I deleted a lot of my response to him because he called it "Cornfusing". I like Denny because he makes me not the longest poster.

I believe Denny understands a lot more than you give him credit for.

Here is the deal. Any aspersions cast upon me by Denny, whether joking or not (I am certain that he was pulling my leg in this case), is well deserved. I have been rattling his cage and pulling his leg (the good one) since 2010, when I first found this site. He gets me. I get him. We are both stronger from this, I believe.
This site would not be what it is to me without DG.
Carl

Understood. It's all good. I'm back in my cage.

Yep.....Carl.....you're to blame fo sho for one leg being longer.
I taint been of much use around the 'Bolt lately, probably a whole
new crowd of Bolter's seeking knowledge now days.
I just needed a break for crawin' under me old trucks and got hooked
on these Cyclekarts. I'd been looking for a decade or so for something
that I could beat around in like a fancy go kart. Thought about throwing
together a simple frame and finding a junkyard 4-banger for it, making
a basic midget sort of ride. Then I found these karts and they fit the
bill perfectly.
It's been a few decades since I built the airplanes and I'd forgotten all
I knew about the Dzus buttons. Back then, it was simple and there were
basically only a few choices. Today the Southco catalog for Dzus is well
over 400 pages long and very cryptic unless you work with it all the time.
But........I am getting it narrowed down.
dg