[jakeru]

Good for you to ask about thread cleaning and anti-seize! For me, a lot of time goes into these details, that surely most "pro" mechanics wouldn't have time for. But, it makes a huge quality improvement to fuss over them.

For cleaning the threads, brake parts cleaner in a spray can with plastic stinger is pretty essential for me. That and paper towels. I usually set the dirty fasteners on a paper towel, give a mild spray on part to saturate, and wet the paper towel some too, then get paper towel nice and wet with the solvent, "wrap" the bolt threads with it, and using enough force to press the saturated paper towel deeply into the threads, give the bolt some back and forth twisting. Keep going (repeat if mecesssry) on new clean area of paper towel. You'll know the threads are clean when the paper towel and solvent applied comes back clean.

To clean threaded holes, it's harder, but you can twist a paper towel up into a little roll, stuff it in with plenty of saturated brake parts cleaner, and twist that first in, then out. Another tip is to use the blasting force of the solvent coming out of the can (through the plastic stinger - delivered right to the female threads) is another trick on the female threaded holes to clean them, but only blasting them with solvent to clean them can go through the fluid quickly, if you don't combine it with some mechanical agitation.

One thing I haven't found a solution for is, the brake parts cleaner is hard on the hands, (and this sort of work is guaranteed to make your hands very dirty), and even using thick nitrile gloves, they'll in a few minutes get degraded by it and even the solvent resistant glove material will expand, weaken, and then tear. Any cleaning solution that works well (especially with acetone will be very quick) will do this. But, aggressive solvent cleaning solutions like brake parts cleaner is simple the modt effective way of doing these fastener cleaning jobs, in my experience.

To apply the anti-seize, you want an even, thin, uniformly applied layer all over rate threads, and potentially a very thin coating up the shank of the bolt as well (anywhere corrosion is a concern, but underneath the bolt head I usually don't do). A fingertip (acceptable, if not recommended to have a nitrile glove on it) is the best tool I've found to help distribute the anti-seize deep and evenly into the threads, by pressing hard and rotating. You can observe it's coated all around the threads, and in all the them. First, you apply a small bit strategically in various locations on the threaded fastener, and it comes out kind of like toothpaste. Some larger anti-seize container have a brush applicator, which can be helpful. Try to brush the stuff around evenly but you'll still want to smear it evenly and uniformly thin with your finger (ideally). Sometimes, I will also take two identical bolts and rub their threaded surface against each other (with the bolt heads at opposite ends) and rotate them around each other several times to as uniformly as possible transfer and help spread the anti-seize out on them uniformly and thinly (you can also use this as a time saving trick to transfer a heavier amount of anti-seize from one bolt onto another bolt that doesn't have enough, or even any anti-seize applied to it.). Ideally, just make sure that you get enough to uniformly an thinly coat the threaded surfaces, and that it gets deep into the thread.

My preferred way of anti-seizing a female threaded hole is to insert a male-antiseized bolt by itself into the hole (threading it in much more deeply then usual), then unthreading it. Remove any excess antisense that would have been pushed to the edge - and what remains on the threads is usually just about perfect. If it seems like it was still dry after doing that once, you can repeat the process, and apply more if desired. Or add more to the male part, and consider it good as some will transfer to the female threads during final assembly. Sometimes, when accessibility permits, you can even thread the bolt in from the back side of the hole, to get the anti-seize more uniformly distributed back there.

The new Porsche bolts have factory applied aluminum+zinc coating, but it will be removed (rubbed away, basically) in areas where they have made metal to metal contact. Anti-seize of most common grade is pretty much zinc, so will keep those areas from corroding. And using anti-seize is important when you have dissimilar metals (like steel bolt going into aluminum... look up "galvanic series" for more info), or areas subject to high heat (exhaust system fasteners in particular are notorious for heat-induced corrosion... as heat accelerates oxidation, so use of anti-seize on them is important) and the last area of corrosion to consider anti-seize are all areas that get wet with water. (Suspension and under-car fasteners often fall into this category.). The anti-seize will coat the bare metal areas, keeping out corrosion, and also can displace open areas where water get get into, and sit. (Like, capillary action between a dry nut+bolt - anti-seize will keep water from wicking up in the and corroding them.)

Any fasteners that are damaged, replace. I think Porsche technically may recommend replacing many fasteners, but in practice, once can get away re-using as long as they're not damaged, and especially if you clean them thorough and apply a light coating of anti-seize to control corrosion. (in fact, done with good cleaning and anti-seize, I would have confidence such a treated used fastener would last longer (before becoming corroded) than new fasteners installed dry - take a look at how well factory "dry-assembled" fasteners last when removing them after lots of miles and weather, to get a sense of how well that works. Sometimes it's OK, other times it's not OK!

When I redid my Porsche suspension, and used anti-seize, I don't recall having any problems torquing fasteners to the full, listed Porsche specifications. When you torque fasteners, you can develop a "feel", however, if the threads are beginning to yield, the resistance drops. If you feel this, a red flag should go off - stop torquing right away. It may be that the torque specifications you can working from have an error (this can happen, so always apply common sense and pay attention to the "feel" when torquing!). You will also *not* be able to get a torque wrench on *all* your fasteners. If this happens, use a wrench you can get on to duplicate the torque of another fastener with identical size and torque spec that you could get a torque wrench on.

Hope this helps - best of luck and let us know if you have any other questions!

Ps - for this application I would recommend the typical zinc-based (gray colored) anti-seize. There are certain very special applications where you'll want something different like copper-based, but I'm not sure if there are any in this car.