I'll collect odds and ends here from prepping the 911 for Auto-x season
Wheel Lugs
My lugnuts felt a little irregular, a little tight going on. The 911 lugs are steel and the lug nuts are aluminum so they can corrode each other. And since the lugs are so much stronger (harder) than the nuts, a lug with some kind of issue can wreck a lug nut - and they are pricey.
You are not supposed to use any kind of lube on lugs, the torque spec is for dry assembly. Yes, not even anti-seize. Hey, I don't make the rules. The core issue is that you can wind up over-torquing the lugnuts. Lugnuts are supposed to be at least property class 10.9 and for an M14 sized fastener that means a maximum torque of 137 ft-lbs. Porsche calls for 96 ft-lbs on the lugs. Where it gets tricky as that wrenches are considered to be off by around 20% so a full 20% over on 96 is 115 ft-lbs, & if we lube this thing up on top of that we only have about another 16% until we hit max (worst case) so it could be a problem. Since the lugnuts are aluminum they would probably not make it that far anyway. They are also several dollars each, and there are 20 of them. Around $100 worth. So we'll be careful.
Chart from FullerFasteners.com
So what to do?
Well, I got out my handy thread chasers and a brass brush. I lifted the car, popped off the wheels and used the brass brush to clean off any big gunk on the lugs. Lets get what we've got into as good shape as we can and see if we still have any issues.
I used thread chasers on the lug as well as the lug nut. They are M14-1.5. I did not use any cutting oil or lube. You can as long as you remember to clean it off afterwards. I turned the tools by hand or with a wrench if they were stiff, until they were easy to turn by hand. And then I put the wheel back on. Easy peasey. It's not glamorous work, but not having your wheels come off at the track or on the highway is nice piece of mind. It does happen - it happened to an instructor on the downhill at Limerock at one of my first driving schools. He got airborne. He was ok, but that was a code brown moment for sure. "don't try this at home".
Both tools are M14-1.5 which is pretty standard.
Our fancy Aluminum lug-nuts are kinda icky inside. Winter and old age can be like that.
After a good brushing, we use the chaser to clean any remaining gunk and rust out of the threads. You can still see a good bit of gunk in the threads. It's also a good time to look at the disks and pads as well. Any grease leaking from the hub? I would also check the bearings but they just got re-done when the strut inserts were installed in the fall.
And here are the studs all cleaned up. Reassembly was nice and smooth, no stiff spots as the lugnuts went on. No bad lugs or lug nuts.
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