RV-12 with Rusty Rivets

I stopped by a local airport and saw an unpainted RV 12 tied down. As I was admiring the rivet job on the top of the wings I noticed many of the pulled rivets were showing signs of rust directly in the center.

Is this common? If so, won't it have a negative impact on the integrity of the rivet over time if left unchecked?

Lastly, what happened to that team from Texas that did a number on my N.Y. Yankees?

The mandrel is steel, so that was probably the rust. The rivets get their integrity from the aluminum parts, so it wouldn't matter much. Still a good reason to paint or clear the plane though.

Rusty rivets

A few years ago I noticed that too on another brand airplane that was tied down.
So for the rivets on my -12 I have taken a coffee can full of rivets and added about 2 ounces of activated variprime and shaked them up to evenly coat the rivets, dumped them out on a flat surface to dry and presto.....
evenly primed rivets, besides offering some corrosion protection the primer allows the finish paint to much easier bridge the transition between the skin and rivet head.
A year or so I described how in Pazmany's PL-4 plans he requires all poulled rivents be dipped in primer and installed wet.
Rick

Diping them wouldn't necessarily work entirely, since the mandrel gets broken off. Any priming you'd done wouldn't have reached the snap-off point of the mandrel, which is the most likely to rust anyway.

As Erich says, "paint it!" There are thousands of airplanes flying today with external pop rivets.

The theory is to dip them and put them in wet then when it breaks off the remaining liquid seals over. if you really want to seal them you can squeeze in a tiny bit of epoxy with a plastic syringe, 12,500 times.....