Xantia alloy wheel bolts help please!!!

[admiral51]

Hi All
Am having a slight problem with the above

First off the alloys are these

Now 3 of the 4 wheels had these bolts including a locking bolt fitted

The other wheel had the bolt on the top fitted

As i found 3 of the "proper" bolts in the boot i decided to put them in as i thought they were the correct ones
My problem is that they were put on the n/s/f wheel and once tightened up the wheel would not turn the bolts are definitely catching on something
If you look at this picture showing bolts the one on the left is from the o/s/f wheel the other from the n/s/f

As you can see from the darkening of the thread the one on the right has gone further into the disc/hub although the bolts all look the same length and thread

Any ideas as to why this is happening

Colin

[George]

All of them are the wrong bolts.

The top one in the second photo is for a standard Xantia steel wheel. The difference between this and the kind that should be fitted to alloy wheels is that the hexagon end is elongated to allow the wheel brace to reach.

The shortened steel wheel Xantia kind be used, but use a deep socket to reach when wheel changing.

I suppose the alloy wheels are a recent addition to the car and came without the proper wheel nuts.

[DickieG]

Have you checked the bolt seats in the wheel, I'm wondering whether one has been dislodged/missing hence the (foolish) idea to use a steel wheel bolt which in turn causes an alloy wheel bolt to catch on a whatever is behind the bolt location.

[vince]

Guys from what has been said, i have the answer to this one....im 99.9% sure anyway

Firstly, each one of these bolts is right for its respective wheel. Yes you can get the flat seated bolts with a longer head but this doesnt mean that you cant use the shorter headed ones...i know because i am running a mixture of both on the same alloys

The problem you have is that one of the alloy wheels it would seem is different to the others. There are 2 types of these alloys. They both look identical but when you drop a bolt in them off the car, you can see that one design takes the flat seat bolt and the other takes a tapered seat bolt. You can tell by the amount of threaded bolt that pokes through the other side. The threaded part on the flat seat bolt is longer so that it reaches the hub. (No taper to take it closer)

How did i come across this?

My first set of wheels took the tapered seat bolts and when i bought what i thought was an identical set of wheels off ebay and tried to fit them i could not get the bolts to catch the hubs.

The reason i found, was that they took the flat seated bolts...and my original wheels had the tapered seat bolts.
After muchos swearing, I ended up having to buy a complete set of flat seat bolts from a french breaker to fit the new wheels...hence why some are short headed and some long headed on mine.....

So i presume the wheel that it catching is the tapered seat wheel fitted with a flat seated bolt...which would catch as the thread is longer

[admiral51]

Thanks for the input guys

As far as im aware these wheels are standard fitment to the VSX (sorry that was not explained in the original post ) and all 4 look identical.
The only wheel that does not have the longer bolts fitted was the n/s/f and that had 4 normal tapered Xantia steel wheel bolts fitted.
I was a little concerned that they would not keep this particular wheel on securley but if as Vince says there are 2 variants of this wheel then i will need to double check with them off the car but that wont be till wednesday at earliest so till then any more thoughts greatly recieved

Cheers

Colin

[citroenxm]

Hmm I disagree with George too!

Ive a set of these "VSX" alloys on a car, I noticed they have trhe recess to take the Steel type bolts.. BUT I've got them fitted to the car with the FLAT type alloy bolts WITH no problems with catching either..

I HAVE found these wheels fitted with the "Steel" wheel bolts too!

I wanted to add that, but unfortunally admiral51, I cannot answer your quirey ive not had a "catching" problem with mine..

Rgds
Paul

[quai_de_javel]

Here is a list of alloy wheels and bolts: http://xantiaclub.net/folders/velgen/

[xantia_v6]

My 1995 VSX used the tapered seat bolts, but my 1997 and 1998 Exclusives use the flat seat bolts.

I remember being surprised by the taper seat bolts, as it would appear to make the allow wheel very highly stressed, due to the direction of the forces and the thinness of the section imposed by the short bolts.

[xmexclusive]

Hi All

My information comes from XM's where Citroen used 3 different types of Alloy wheel bolt during the production run. Long & short length flat type and then finally special composite with both taper and flats. They even swapped bolt type while retaining the same pattern of alloy wheel with the "Etoile" and "Monte Carlo" wheels. Long bolts were used with alloys with a centre holes and plastic cover. Short bolts were used with the early Mk2 types of solid centre alloys that are such a sod to get balanced as very few tyre places have conversion mandrel for the balancer. The reason for the shorter bolts is that Citroen could use a thinner centre section with the solid wheel centre. The steel spare supplied with these were specials with welded collets to use the same flat alloy wheel bolts. Citroen then decided to change again so they could use a standard steel wheel as the alloy spare. They did this by designing the special composite taper/flat alloy wheel bolt and modified the alloy wheel seats to match. These composite bolts are expensive to buy. The flat is designed to take the load when used with alloys so a standard taper bolt may well overstress and cause cracking to these alloys. I have seen the composite bolts offered as Pug ones regularly on ebay so PSA may well have rung similar design changes on all their alloy wheels during the 1990's.

John