I have a 2004 Cayenne S. In the summer I have a set of 22 inch wheels that I put on and store my factory wheels in the garage. Last winter I did not drive the Cayenne so I left the aftermarket wheels on and they have been on for over 2 years. When I put the factory wheels back on the factory lug nuts would not go all the way in, and the tires would not set against the hub. The lug nuts for the after market wheels are shorter than the factory ones and they did in fact tighten the wheels. Is it ok to use the aftermarket lug nuts on the factory wheels? The cone size that sits in the wheel is smaller on the aftermarket lugs than they are on the factory ones. Also what can I do to get the factory lugs to go all the way in? I sprayed some PB Blaster in one of the holes and hit it hard with an impact wrench and it did go in further but was extremely tight. With the flex pipes I know mine are shot, whats the worst that can happen if I wait until the spring to get them fixed? Can I damage anything?

 

Don't use cone-seat lug bolts. The Cayenne is designed to use ball-seat.

 

So for the lug bolts:
Have you looked inside the holes in the hub? Check for corrosion and damaged threads. Also check your aftermarket bolts with the factory bolts and make sure they are EXACTLY the same diameter and thread pitch. I have seen wheel shops install incorrect bolts/nuts with aftermarket wheels which destroys hubs/studs.

If everything looks good, get a thread chaser and run it on the threads in the hub and on the bolts.

Also, the torque spec on those is 118lbft, so don't go crazy with the impact.

 

And what "flex pipes" are you talking about.

 

As far as the flex pipes it's The exhaust flex pipes up front by the engine. Should've been more specific.

 

As someone else mentioned, running something into the original factory lug after spraying with a penetrating oil could reveal rust that's keeping the original lug from going on all the way... that would be step number 1 but it's not a very likely scenario if every original factory lug is equally loose when tightened as far as they can go.

One possible problem... if you were using replacement lugs with the replacement wheels that came with the wheels and you are now using the original factory lugs with original factory wheels and you can't tighten the factory lugs enough to hold the wheel securely, the ONLY thing that could have happened is that SOMEONE used an air wrench set to a very high torque value and they streched the studs the lugs thread onto. The ONLY fix for that is replacing every stud with new studs, 5 per wheel. Streched studs can fail since the stud is now thinner in the area that streches. And the streching destroys heat treating and such that may have been performed on the studs before they were installed at the factory so streched studs are much weaker than original studs that have never been streched.

 

I'm confused. I thought he was talking lug bolts - which every Cayenne (and AFAIK every German car) comes from the factory with. No studs - studs have been installed in racing applications to aid in quick wheel swaps - but stock there are no studs to stretch.

One possibility that came to mind for me - is the bolts are simply too long - and are bottoming out on whatever is behind the hub. On some cars - like BMWs - doing this usually does something nasty like destroying ABS sensors and such. Dunno on the Cayenne, never really looked.