I had planned to rotate my wheels today as the fronts have only about half their tread left.

However I tried to remove one of the rear alloys but its stuck and wont come off! :shock:

Any ideas, or do i have to use brute force?

The car is only 12 months old.

You have been washing the car too much

Same problem experienced on RS rears the hub machining is a interference fit in the wheel on the RS probably the same on the fabia, I suggest you jack the wheel off ground, remove wheel bolts, then apply wd40 to wheel flange area where it joins the hub so it penetrates the mating surfaces, leave for a while then wiggle the wheel again to see if it starts to become free. If not I suggest putting a peice of wood against the rear tyre side wall and hit with a suitable hammer, being careful not to disturb the car whilst its on the jack

My rears were quite subborn - but released using this method after a while. Once off I suggest coting the mating surfaces with copper ease or similar. I removed mine today after some while with teh greease applied and they came off no problem.

Best of Luck

You have been washing the car too much

Same problem experienced on RS rears the hub machining is a interference fit in the wheel on the RS probably the same on the fabia, I suggest you jack the wheel off ground, remove wheel bolts, then apply wd40 to wheel flange area where it joins the hub so it penetrates the mating surfaces, leave for a while then wiggle the wheel again to se if it starts to become free. If not I suggest putting a peice of wood against the rear trye side wall and hit with a suitable hammer. being careful not to dusturb the car whilst its on the jack

My rears were quite subborn - but released using this method after a while. Once off I suggest coting the mating surfaces with copper ease or similar. I removed mine today after some while with teh greease applied and they came off no problem.

Best of Luck[/quote:b33c0bff78]

Thanks, I'll have another go tomorrow...

Good job I wasn't stuck on the hard shoulder with a puncture!!

A rubber tent peg hammer would be very suitable for applying brute force! From past posts on this subject it is clear to me that I need to take my wheels off soon to sort them out too. It will also be an opportunity to try out the car jack in daylight and on my own terms rather than trying to figure it out at night in the rain beside a busy road. I also intend taking out the front RH (?) air vent and fitting the towing eye so that I know how to do that too if necessary. :?

Took the wheels alloys off on Monday to sort out anticipated problems with rust/sticking. All 4 wheels came off with no problems. Rears were almost as new where they mated with the rear hubs, while there was only a very small amount of rust behind the fronts. What interested me was that the exposed threads on all the front wheel bolts were filled with a white powder - somewhat similar to the corrosion to be found on car battery terminals. However there was no signs of related corrosion on the alloys. Any ideas on what it was and why?

The car jack was very easy to use and all the wheel bolts undid easily using the supplied wheel wrench (brace). After smearing copper grease on the mating faces of the wheels and on the wheel bolts, I tightening the wheel bolts with the wheel wrench. Finally, I used a torque wrench to check the tightening torque and found that all the wheel bolts were very close to or at 120Nm. QED.

Have observed the same white powder on the wheel nuts - assumed it to be because of a ? galvanic / electrostatic action ( I'm no physicist ) between dissimilar metals but because it was on the bolts I would assume that it was aluminium oxide from the wheel , since the bolts are probably steel and less likely to corrode from being in contact with another metal .

It will be interesting to see if Copper-ease (?) halts the process .

Finally managed to remove the rear wheels and swap them for the fronts.

I too had the strange white powder on my wheel bolts, which i removed with a brush and lightly applied some copper grease.

I made sure the mounting surfaces had plenty of grease on them too.

I had no problems with removing the fronts, only the rears.