Locking Wheel Bolts

While stranded on the hard shoulder with a flat rear (tyre wrecked, how much does one of those cost?), found I was able to remove the wheel with just the wheel "brace", actually a weedy piece of steel tube which bends when you undo the nuts. What surprised me was that the locking wheel bolt - which mates with the adapter - is not used to secure the wheel but the 17mm spacer underneath to the hub. Why in the world do they protect the spacer while allowing the wheel to be nicked just by undoing the 5 nuts?

Tyre should be around £200, depending on brand and where you shop (I use Micheldever). Not sure about the wheel nuts. Pretty sure mine protects wheel though.

I think the deal with spacers is that the adaptor is secured to the hub with the original bolts and locking wheel bolt, and the wheel is secured to the adaptor with nuts. If you want to secure the wheel you will have to buy yourself a set of locking wheel nuts, I suspect. What kind of wheels have you got that you have 17mm spacers fitted...?

I bought my car secondhand and it came with the £1320 Sport Techno wheel option... Not sure what the fuss is about them but the wheel was certainly much lighter than I expected when I removed it in the torrential rain...

Micheldever came up trumps, in stock, £175, fitted in 10 minutes, excellent service.

Paul is right. On wheels without spacers, the bolts secure the wheel to the hub and the locking nut therefore prevents the wheel being removed if you haven't got the adaptor. When spacers are fitted, the original bolts serve to retain the spacer, and new nuts are needed to attach the wheel to the spacer. So you'll need a locking nut if you want to secure it in place. Maybe one of your wheels has one plain nut and four locking nuts?

Oh - where did you put the wheel after you'd taken it off, btw? Only decent place I could find was in the NSR seat with the passenger seat fully forward. Luckily I was alone that day. Would have been a great shame to leave a passenger on the roadside. [ ]

I'll check the other wheels. As for storage, exactly the same solution. I think it would also fit on the front seat and maybe across the rear seats with the seat backs down. When the wheel is off, it is huge. As it was, I didn't want to go all the way to Micheldever with the emergency spare - 140 mile round tip, long way but I don't trust others with my alloys and they had the tyre in stock - so I went in my F355 with it sitting on the front seat. I always knew the F355 had a practical side to it... LOL

We (me plus man from the RAC sent by Porsche Assist) tried to get it in the front but couldn't. Can't remember why not - it may have been that we thought it a little loose and liable to fall onto the centre console. As the tyre had blown in the outside lane of the motorway at, err, can't remember what speed, the smell was absolutely awful. If the hardtop hadn't been there I'd have put the roof down - even though it was Christmas eve. I was only about 50 miles from Micheldever, and about 50 from home, so I went straight to them. The drive there on the emergency spare was not fun - mainly because people don't expect a 911 to be doing only 50 on a dual carriageway. I lost count of the number of near shunts. Oh - do check the spare. They have to take the valve out to deflate it enough to get it back in the boot. They forgot to put my valve back in. Luckily I noticed it while cleaning the muck off the spare not on the roadside with a new flat tyre. They were very good about it - put me in touch with a local fitter who replaced it and gave me a nifty dust cap that has prongs to take the valve out to deflate it next time. You might want to try inflating it - when I did I also noticed that ion wedging it back in the boot, the tyre had come off the rim. (They sorted that out, too).