So last night in torrential rain while taking someone home who was ill
we had a flat tyre in the Octavia. We were only a few hundred yards into
the journey, so drove back very slowly on the flat, I unloaded a huge
amount of boat trailer metalwork from the back seats of the Disco and we
continued the trip in that.

This morning I tried to get the wheel off. A huge lever on the end of
the wheel brace eventually got the nuts off and it then only took about
another hour levering against brake parts to finally free the wheel and
get the spare on.

I like the Octavia because it has a full sized spare on a matching alloy
wheel. Comparing the shiny spare to the wheel that came off shows
corrosion on the fitted wheel - it looks like bi-metallic corrosion. The
mating faces are mostly ok, but their edges have pitting and the centre,
where it sits on the hub has turned white. The wheel nuts also look a
bit gritty on the threads.

My question is this - should I coat all these mating surfaces with
something, and if so, what? Just grease, or is there something better?

I will try to clean off the dirt and surface corrosion, but should I
really be planning to take all the wheels off regularly for a clean and
grease? It would be a real pain, but we came very close to being stuck
on a remote country lane with invalid on board last night and it feels
as though I should take some action.
--
Bill

On 28/08/11 15:49, Bill wrote:

My question is this - should I coat all these mating surfaces with
something, and if so, what? Just grease, or is there something better?

Copperease/Copaslip. Wire brush the corrosion off first.

The easy way to get a stuck wheel off is to put the bolts back, leaving
them slightly loose. Drive back and forward a foot or so, and perhaps
give the top of the wheel a kick or shove. Never failed for me- the
weight of the car helps you out.

In article ,
Bill wrote:

My question is this - should I coat all these mating surfaces with
something, and if so, what? Just grease, or is there something better?

Tiny smear of coppergrease is what we used to use at the garage - always
seemed to cure the problem.

I will try to clean off the dirt and surface corrosion, but should I
really be planning to take all the wheels off regularly for a clean and
grease? It would be a real pain, but we came very close to being stuck
on a remote country lane with invalid on board last night and it feels
as though I should take some action.

Loosen nuts/bolts slightly, rock car forward and backwards a little (inches
I mean). This will usually break the corrosion if you are stuck in the
middle of nowhere.

Darren

"D.M.Chapman" dmc@puffin. wrote in message
...
In article ,
Bill wrote:

My question is this - should I coat all these mating surfaces with
something, and if so, what? Just grease, or is there something better?

Tiny smear of coppergrease is what we used to use at the garage - always
seemed to cure the problem.

I will try to clean off the dirt and surface corrosion, but should I
really be planning to take all the wheels off regularly for a clean and
grease? It would be a real pain, but we came very close to being stuck
on a remote country lane with invalid on board last night and it feels
as though I should take some action.

Loosen nuts/bolts slightly, rock car forward and backwards a little
(inches
I mean). This will usually break the corrosion if you are stuck in the
middle of nowhere.

40 years ago I bought a wheel brace from a long gone shop in Cleveleys -
Lancashire.
I still have it.
It has never bent or twisted and has taken off every wheel in the past 40
years.
It cost me £1. That was a lot of money in those days.

On Aug 28, 6:42*pm, "Mr Pounder"
wrote:
middle of nowhere.

40 years ago I bought a wheel brace from a long gone shop in Cleveleys -
Lancashire.
I still have it.
It has never bent or twisted and has taken off every wheel in the past 40
years.

That's a lot of wheels. Are you sure?

Every once in a while, Lidl have a telescopic wheelbrace. Extends to about
2ft and will shift any wheel nut by just using your weight. Comes with a
sort of reversible socket with two common sizes - or you can use a
standard 1/2 drive one of your choice.
Very good VFM.

--
*Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Bill" wrote in message
news
So last night in torrential rain while taking someone home who was ill we
had a flat tyre in the Octavia. We were only a few hundred yards into the
journey, so drove back very slowly on the flat, I unloaded a huge amount
of boat trailer metalwork from the back seats of the Disco and we
continued the trip in that.

This morning I tried to get the wheel off. A huge lever on the end of the
wheel brace eventually got the nuts off and it then only took about
another hour levering against brake parts to finally free the wheel and
get the spare on.

Sometimes alloy wheels corrode to the hub and stick like the very devil. Put
a pair of sturdy leather boots on, remove all the bolts and kick the tyre on
alternate sides as hard as you can from the front. Levering from the back is
not the best way to go.
--
Dave Baker

Bill wrote:

I will try to clean off the dirt and surface corrosion, but should I
really be planning to take all the wheels off regularly for a clean and
grease?

Other than greasing (as said), whenever you take your car to the garage
and they've likely taken the wheels off, go round and re-tighten the
bolts properly. Most places airgun then on way too tight rather than the
proper figure (say about 110Nm for an average car, Disco's are higher
IIRC.) which is only really a decent heave on a proper length breaker
bar/torque wrench. Damned garages don't think in terms of people being
able to do them away from home.

egg sucking warning Don't grease the studs/bolts. /ESW

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

In article ,
Scott M wrote:
Other than greasing (as said), whenever you take your car to the garage
and they've likely taken the wheels off, go round and re-tighten the
bolts properly. Most places airgun then on way too tight rather than the
proper figure (say about 110Nm for an average car, Disco's are higher
IIRC.) which is only really a decent heave on a proper length breaker
bar/torque wrench. Damned garages don't think in terms of people being
able to do them away from home.

Well, even KwikFit check the nuts with a torque wrench. I'd hope a proper
garage would too.
Most wheel braces as supplied with the car simply ain't up to the job -
even with the nuts correctly torqued.

--
*If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In message , Scott M
writes
egg sucking warning Don't grease the studs/bolts. /ESW

Thanks to everyone for the input.

Oddly the thing I am not sure about is this quote above. I've cleaned
off the wheel that came off, and looked at all the mating and "close"
surfaces, and at the edges I am sure bi-metallic corrosion has affected
the wheels. This also seems to have occurred where the wheel bolts go
through the holes. It doesn't look too serious, but it is happening.
I was actually thinking of applying grease to the wheel bolts, as the
corrosion seems to have happened at the edges where the air and salt get
at things, and I can see what looks like corrosion where the bolts go
through the alloy wheels..

Maybe I'm a bit paranoid. I like steel wheels better because they are
more elastic, but we once had a wheel of an industrial trailer come off
on the motorway and the investigation showed that it had been tightened
onto rust, which had powdered and fallen away on the road.

--
Bill

In article ,
Scott M wrote:
egg sucking warning Don't grease the studs/bolts. /ESW

Wheel bolts are vastly over engineered and greasing them is always a good
idea.

--
*People want trepanners like they want a hole in the head*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Well, even KwikFit check the nuts with a torque wrench. I'd hope a proper
garage would too.

For many a year I used a good outfit that /did/ do it properly and been
faced with friends' cars that Jeff Capes had had a go at so I may be out
of date as to 'standard' practise!


Most wheel braces as supplied with the car simply ain't up to the job -
even with the nuts correctly torqued.

Apparently they make them short on purpose to avoid the owner
over-tightening the nuts knowing that they like to leap up and down on them.

(Hon. mention Jaguar: the wheel braces they supply are made of cheese
and the hex deforms to a circle after about one use. This is especially
astounding as their nuts have a thin ally outside coat[1])


[1] Which also deforms.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Bill wrote:
In message , Scott M
writes
egg sucking warning Don't grease the studs/bolts. /E

Oddly the thing I am not sure about is this quote above.

I admit to merely regurgitating that one tho I don't like the idea of
buggering up the torquing of wheel bolts (tho I take Dave's point that
they can take a lot of abuse.)

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

In article ,
Scott M wrote:
I admit to merely regurgitating that one tho I don't like the idea of
buggering up the torquing of wheel bolts (tho I take Dave's point that
they can take a lot of abuse.)

But you need to know if the torque setting is for a greased or dry bolt.
Assuming it is dry can be equally as bad as assuming it should be greased.
But in the case of wheel fixings, they're generally extremely tolerant,
because they must be.

--
*I want it all and I want it delivered

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:14:19 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
Scott M wrote:
egg sucking warning Don't grease the studs/bolts. /ESW

Wheel bolts are vastly over engineered and greasing them is always a
good idea.

It's one of the very few things I use a quick splash of wd40 for.

cheers

Jules

In article ,
Jules Richardson wrote:
Wheel bolts are vastly over engineered and greasing them is always a
good idea.

It's one of the very few things I use a quick splash of wd40 for.

I use copper grease - same as for stopping the wheel seizing on its spigot.
To prevent corrosion, rather than as a lubricant.

--
*Confession is good for the soul, but bad for your career.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:46:31 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:


I initially tighten mine with a small (9 inch) 3/8" breaker bar. This
more or less gets them to about 60lbft / 80Nm specified in the
workshop manual with a high degree of accuracy. I always check with a
torque wrench though.

On 29/08/11 12:14, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Scott wrote:
egg sucking warning Don't grease the studs/bolts./ESW

Wheel bolts are vastly over engineered and greasing them is always a good
idea.

I have to say I always put a slight smear of copperease on the threads
(but only the threads), and do them up as tight as they will go by hand
with the manufacturers wheelbrace, then check with a torque wrench if
one is handy. Generally, I find it pretty accurate, and I can generally
get them off by hand or a slight kick on the wheelbrace, and the only
time I've had a wheel come loose was when a garage left them loose...

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:04:54 +0100, "Dave Baker"
wrote:

Sometimes alloy wheels corrode to the hub and stick like the very devil. Put
a pair of sturdy leather boots on, remove all the bolts and kick the tyre on
alternate sides as hard as you can from the front.

Doing that on a lot of modern vehicles is a good way to have it fall
off the jack. If this is before the wheel falls off its not too bad,
if its a simultaneous event then you could f*ck your discs... or even
worse.


--

On 29 Aug, 14:15, Scott M wrote:
snip

(Hon. mention Jaguar: the wheel braces they supply are made of cheese
and the hex deforms to a circle after about one use. This is especially
astounding as their nuts have a thin ally outside coat[1])

[1] Which also deforms.

--
Scott


That's up there with Maserati. I was astonished at the wheel nuts
rusting, yes rusting, after only one removal. A real education on the
build quality of these 'Fine' Italian automobiles.

I've had BMW alloys seize on the hubs. I once invested in two tins of
that puncture repair aerosol to allow me drive it to the nearest
garage. (Two tins of this expensive guck hardly registered on the low
profile tyre.) Bloody garage couldn't remove it either so he fixed the
puncture in situ. My local tyre retailer finally got it off with a
small sledge hammer.

Drive flat tyres seemed to be the answer on the next car and then I
discovered they can't be repaired if they suffer a puncture. That'll
be a new tyre sir. Arggghhhh.

Paul Mc Cann

On Aug 30, 12:32*pm, fred wrote:
I've had BMW alloys seize on the hubs. I once invested in two tins of
that puncture repair aerosol to allow me drive it to the nearest
garage. (Two tins of this expensive guck hardly registered on the low
profile tyre.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/o0OMouse...11/tQqg6sV5R28

Not the greatest video at the start, but it's a friend of mine
watching for five minutes as tyre weld continues to ooze out of the
nail hole is a toally ineffectual manner.

In article
,
fred wrote:
I've had BMW alloys seize on the hubs. I once invested in two tins of
that puncture repair aerosol to allow me drive it to the nearest
garage. (Two tins of this expensive guck hardly registered on the low
profile tyre.) Bloody garage couldn't remove it either so he fixed the
puncture in situ. My local tyre retailer finally got it off with a
small sledge hammer.

Slacken the bolts slightly and drive the car back and forwards a few
times. Perhaps with a bit of hard braking. Obviously, in a safe place to
do so. I'd rather that than use a hammer.

--
*The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.