Cupra alloy wheel will not come off

[littleripa]

Attempted a front, rear swap of the wheels on my Derv Cupra so I can replace all 4 PZero tyres in a few months (hopefully with some Toyos).

Front OS wheel came off fine. Took all 5 studs out the back OS and the wheel just stayed in place. Rubber mallet to the back of the wheel, plank of wood and a bigger hammer, tried to lever to wheel off.... would not budge. Mystery to me why, I have never had this before with a car, anyone else had anything similar??

I gave up and put it all back together, think I will revised my plans now. Gonna get a set of 2 tyres fitted to the front wheels and then the garage can do the front to rear swap so the old tyres can get tortured and replaced shortly after.

 

[mhill]

Its all down to electrolysis where two different metals are in contact

 

[markthommo_84]

Attempted a front, rear swap of the wheels on my Derv Cupra so I can replace all 4 PZero tyres in a few months (hopefully with some Toyos).

Front OS wheel came off fine. Took all 5 studs out the back OS and the wheel just stayed in place. Rubber mallet to the back of the wheel, plank of wood and a bigger hammer, tried to lever to wheel off.... would not budge. Mystery to me why, I have never had this before with a car, anyone else had anything similar??

I gave up and put it all back together, think I will revised my plans now. Gonna get a set of 2 tyres fitted to the front wheels and then the garage can do the front to rear swap so the old tyres can get tortured and replaced shortly after.

yeah i had this when painting my calipers. think in the end i stood on a spoke with all my weight to turn the wheel in order to loosen it! just have a floor mat or something on the ground so it doesnt land face down

 

[Gooner_Mike]

Attempted a front, rear swap of the wheels on my Derv Cupra so I can replace all 4 PZero tyres in a few months (hopefully with some Toyos).

Front OS wheel came off fine. Took all 5 studs out the back OS and the wheel just stayed in place. Rubber mallet to the back of the wheel, plank of wood and a bigger hammer, tried to lever to wheel off.... would not budge. Mystery to me why, I have never had this before with a car, anyone else had anything similar??

I gave up and put it all back together, think I will revised my plans now. Gonna get a set of 2 tyres fitted to the front wheels and then the garage can do the front to rear swap so the old tyres can get tortured and replaced shortly after.

I know what its like, you don't want to clobber your wheels too much

Garage should be able to do this for you but they might insist you buy something (like new tyres )

 

[Nath.]

Plenty of WD40, give it a day or 2, then clobber it again with a mallet and a lump of wood.

Keep 2 wheel bolts in loose so the wheel doesn't come off face down .

 

[basssound]

Or place all 5 in but leave them a turn or two loose and drive the car down the road and back very slowly, better of you can turn the car around in a full circle to loosen the wheel!
Done this several times, save as houses

 

[Nath.]

I was actually going to say that, but I know there are some do-gooders on here that would go and tell a teacher

 

[basssound]

I have to do this when removing rusted on HGV wheels from hubs, they do not hammer off like car wheel lol!!

 

[littleripa]

Good to know others have had a similar issue. I was sat out there on my ar$e in the cold covered in grease, the job had beaten me, wondering why I bother sometimes. I was smaking it so hard my neighbour commented on the noise!!!

I did consider the driving round loose wheel nuts idea at the time but had a word with myself, so you seriously do that???

One good thing, I checked the oil whilst out there and it was at the bottom of the dipstick... Half a bottle of the £12 per litre VWPD stuff from Halfords, ouch!!

 

[kriso]

I had this with my rear wheels. One of them wouldn't budge no matter how much I hit it with a rubber mallet so I loosened the wheel bolts and backed the car up a couple of metres, then drove it forward and hit the brakes hard (going quite slow obviously). This helped but I still had to hammer at it and rock it back and forwards while turning it to free it

 

[Altech]

When you put the wheels back on make sure you apply plenty of copper grease to the hub so that the wheel won't stick again

 

[RUM4MO]

When you put the wheels back on make sure you apply plenty of copper grease to the hub so that the wheel won't stick again

Yes but not toooooo much as it will start to appear as blackish lines on your nice clean alloys after you've driven a bit fastish and used the brakes a bit!

I'd add, if anyone out there has not made sure that their wheels are already copper greased, then make the effort now before you really really need to change wheels quickly!

Just loosen all the bolts maybe about one turn with the weight of the car still on the wheels - then rock the car and/or wheel, then grab each wheel, if you can feel/hear it moving on the hub then its free, jack up each wheel in turn, try to remove any "salts" from the hub and inner wheel surface - maybe use that green pad stuff - wipe clean and add copper grease - replace wheel and tighten up the bolts and drop the car back down, repeat on other three wheels, final wheel bolt tighten once all wheels are on the ground (would be good to use a torque wrench though) - job done!

 

[depresion]

I always copper slip them and the rears were still a pain (the senter of the hub is quite long and makes matrters a lot worse) a set of hubsentric spacers on the rear solves the problem.

 

[Cupra_Jay]

i had the same problem aswell with my rear drivers side wheel...got a puncture and tried to change the wheel when i got home, jacked it up took all the bolts out and the dam thing would not move!! got quite pissed off with it and ended up booting it several times im one corner and then started rocking the wheel and after a minute of 2 it came off!!

didnt have any copper grease..still dont, but i got a wire brush and some wd40 and scrubbed the inside of the wheel and the hub and then applied some wd40 before i put the wheel back on. no doubt that in the not so near future when i swap my fronts to backs, im gonna have the same problem with the rear side passenger wheel as that has not been taken off in 3+ years!! lol

didnt know you could drive the car like that with the bolts undone slightly...got a feeling im going to have to give that a go as and when!

where can you buy copper grease from?? halfrauds??

 

[Leigh15]

as that has not been taken off in 3+ years!!

Surely it would have been off when the car's serviced if nothing else?

 

[depresion]

WD40 dries out quite quickly so it's not a good option for something like this.

 

[Cupra_Jay]

Surely it would have been off when the car's serviced if nothing else?

my car has had 2 services at Seat and i have no idea what they do to the car when its there!

WD40 dries out quite quickly so it's not a good option for something like this.

was on the phone to my mate at the time who was a mechanic for Citroen who said about copper grease, told him i dont have any so he said to use WD40 for the time being.