Throw my Fuch's away? (long..sorry)

[expat]

What do I do guys?

When I bought my car 1.5 yrs ago the tyres were nearly new. Didn't need to remove them for a while.
When I did (try) I found the lug nuts were really hard to undo. In the process I broke three of the nuts and had to cut/drill them out. To be honest, I made a bit of a mess of them. With one nut eventually I was able to spin it off. The other two were a nightmare and I actually drilled too far - going about 1mm into the wheel itself with the drill.

Well I finally got them all off, and looking at the wheels I realised this must have happened before because I could see evidence of this previously. Tiny little drill holes.

So I bought new lug nuts, a soft socket, cleaned up the 'barrell' in which the cone of the nuts sits in the wheel, added some antiseize and put them back on. (actually after some other work I doing)

I took the car to a local Porsche specialist and he torqued them to spec.

Since then he has had the car a few times and about five months ago replaced the shocks requiring the wheels to be removed. No dramas this time apparently.

Now we move forward to yesterday. I was being offered some BBS wheels at a good price from the wrench. We took the car around to a tyre specialist to do some tyre juggling to see what the car would look like with BBS wheels.

The nuts were locked tight again! I asked them not to use the air gun to remove the nuts. Suffice to say on one wheel they broke two nuts

They also broke my lock nut tool - thats right - not the nut but the actual lock nut socket! Now I can't even remove the other wheels - things have gone from bad to worse.

Ok, so we might be able to get another lock nut socket from somewhere, we'll see. At worst we are going to have to destroy the lug nuts to get the wheels off. This time I'm going to let them do it.

I suspect the whole problem revolves around the previous damage to the wheels which has caused the nuts to 'bite' into the wheels when they were torqued up, although I guess I could blame the wrench for over tightening but that's not too likely as they do it all day long.

So now what's my choices -

Throw the fuchs away (ouch$$$)
Repair the fuchs - can the barrell on the wheel where the cone of the lug nut recessess into, be re-drilled, (honed, counter-sunk), or will this make the wheel too thin at this point and become dangerous to use for high speed driving?

Do I try blaming the wrench for over tightening, (I'm really reluctant to do this for several reasons) and force him to find me some replacement fuch wheels????????

What would you suggest?

PS - I didn't really like the look of the gold/polished BBS wheels - they looked too Miami Vice.

[chrisp]

Here's a thought. First of all you need to keep an eye on those little drill holes. They are good places for cracks to start.

If you want aluminum nuts then go get a bunch of new lug nuts. Take the old ones and drill out the threads. Cut them just at where the taper becomes wrench flats on the lug nut. Save the tapered piece

Take the second set of nuts and cut them in the same place but don't drill out the threads. You are sacrificing the tapered part and trying to save as much of the wrench flat area as possible.

Take the big piece of the lugs with threads and mate them up with the tapered parts from the old nuts. Now you have a two piece system. One piece is tapered and acts as a washer and the second is the nut and has all of it's threads and holds the wheel on.

The key here is you need to get both pices flat to each other so when they are mounted they fit perfectly against each other. I would have them cut on a lathe.

This certainly is a litte bit of work but since you do not want to buy new wheels then this may be your only choice.

You could aslo try steel lug nuts. They will not "mesh" with the your textured aluminum face of the lug area and should spin off more easily. Try this first as steel lug nuts are a cheaper alternative.

[Oldporsche]

I might approach a good machine shop about the pits in the radiused mateing surface of the fuchs. You would be supprise at what a good shop can do to repair these pits. I use anti-seize on this surface as well as the wheel stud threads.

Never use a air wrench on these lugs. Don't let those bozos at the tire shop near the lug nuts. These numb nuts are dangerous around your expensive wheels. Throw away the lug locks.

Chrisp is being careful to retain the radius mating surface. This is not a tapered seat as it is on steel wheels. Be careful here. If you use steel lugs for Fuch wheels, make sure that the mating surface is radiused and not tapered.

Good luck,
David Duffield

[pwd72s]

"never use an air wrench"...NEVER USE AN AIR WRENCH! David said it well...anti seize needs to go on the curved face of your lug nuts. Buy your own Torque wrench, and soft socket. If the tire shop you use insists on using an air wrench, find another tire shop. NEVER USE AN AIR WRENCH! Oh, one more thing. NEVER USE AN AIR WRENCH! I use a breaker bar & soft socket to remove, a torque wrench to install..."righty tighty...lefty loosey"...

[expat]

Sorry - maybe I wasn't clear enough...they didn't use an air wrench, they undid the nuts with my soft socket, a bar and eventually a breaker bar.

Also I did have anti-seize on the nuts.

Thanks for your replies

[Jim Smolka]

They make steel nuts for 911s. Though this might not be the fix, I doubt they would break....