my car is much older than this and none of the bolts are rusty. I think something stripped the corrosion protection off, likely a cleaning product.
Ford has entered the chat: “Amateurs!”
Never had any of my cars do this. The lugs on my 12 year old 997 were pristine. I would be very surprised if these are OEM, esp since this looks to be a fairly modern car.
The lugs on my 1986 look better than this.
My boxsters lugs looked like that. I cleaned them up and spayed the black with high temp paint. Seemed to work for a while
Every Mercedes I’ve owned and seen in the road does this too. “That German Steel”
Do you use washing detergents that contain chlorides? That could cause this.
I have yet to see something like that happen on a 30+ yo cars, this is ridiculous
Yuck.
I don’t think this should happen either.
Remove, sand, paint
You just gotta put a bit of elbow grease in and clean em up but they’re still better then the cheesy plastic sheathed ones that split and fragment off when your trying to take a set off to put winters on vice versa
Based on the chemical etching on the black rims… I’d say this is the result of heavy carwashing (like the tunnels) or the owner is using the wrong cleaning chemicals with super hard, mineral dense water. That doesn’t look like a basic coat of rust dust, that looks like a full on chemical reaction.
This comment for the win! 🍻 Going on 12 years at a Premiere Porsche dealer and you’d be surprised how badly the wrong car washes, wheel cleaners, and God forbid tire shine treatments that ruin the finish on wheels, calipers, lug bolts/nuts, and tire sidewall cracking.
Hell one of the largest national dealer vendors tried getting shops in our area to switch to a new version of brake cleaner, and it was literally melting the seals in the Wurth brake clean spray bottles! We also got the wrong wheel cleaner once and luckily my boss and I were there that day so we of course when WTF we gotta check if this is bad for our cars or not…tested it on a totaled car at our body shop located behind us and damn it might have been straight up acid.
Lot of those products are too harsh, especially if they advertise will remove brake dust or bugs without scrubbing or the like, then it’s usually too good to be true and gonna mess your car up either soon or long term if you keep using the bad stuff. Like how no detailer will use Armor All! 😉
That still shouldn’t be able to strip the finish off of a fastener; shoddy coating testing or finance got barking up the wrong tree.
I heard yesterday the Center Lug Nut on the GT3 RS if using the wrong soaps turn white and really acceptable to damage. And they cost your soul to replace.
You heard WRONG - it’s your firstborn, not your soul, silly.
People. Those are OEM with a seriously not concerned owner. These bolts use bolt caps to prevent that from happening, just like Audis, VW, Lambo and I think Bugatti.
You need to make sure to take them off and put them back in whenever you do any type of service that require taking off the wheels.
Maybe the dude just had bad luck, didn’t remember to put the caps back on or went to a place where they did not do that for him.
In all cases: Shame.
My 1998 Mitsubishi gallant didn’t have this problem. Let me know if you’d like to trade.
That’s ridiculous if these are OEM.
I’ve had some cheap cars over the years and have never had this happen to any lug.
Since it costs as much as a house I expect those to be shiny.