I recently redid the connnection of my mast base. The two rivets were starting to tear loose. I drilled out the old rivets and drilled and tapped 4 new holes for 1/4-20 x 1/2 BHSCS. The only thing that concerned me was how thin the aluminum of the base was to tap into. I just made sure that I used loctite and didn't torque too much. Seems to be working just fine so far.