[jakeru]

It's a life saver to prevent galling and corrosion. The only reason they don't use the stuff at the factory when assembling the cars new, as far as I can gather, is to save $ on labor. It takes time to properly apply the stuff - you'll want a thin and even coating for best results.

I like to apply in a few strategic places on the fastener, and then smoosh it deeply and uniformly into the threads with my fingers. I usually aim to get full coverage on all the threaded surface of a fastener. 'Spotty coverage' isn't as desirable. The smooshing process takes some force, and is a bit hard on the fingers, though. I'd avoid putting it under the bolt head if you're concerned about the fastener loosening. For example, avoid putting it on conical faces of lug bolts. Put it on the threads only. Any corroding areas though, can be protected by a thin coating of anti-seize. Even the outer, non-contact surfaces of the bolt head. So if you want extra corrosion protection under the bolt head, you can put it there, but usually, I wouldn't put it there, (or just put a very thin amount, if any, to protect from corrosion). If you want full-on corrosion protection, and exhaust nuts/bolts/washers are a good example, you can be more liberal with the stuff. You can even coat both sides of washers, the whole surfaces of the bolts, and the nuts, in that case! Exhaust fasteners are very demanding for corrosion protection, and a more liberal than usual amount of anti-seize is *very* appropriate for them.

Sometimes, you can get nearly as good results and avoid the finger smooshing by taking two fasteners with same thread diameter and pitch, and sort of rubbing the threads together. Hard to describe, but have the bolts point 180 degrees apart, mate the threads together, and make one fastener orbit around the other while keeping the threads in contact. You'll need to to go around several times to get it right and may still need to redistribute the stuff to get an even layer. If you get too much on one fastener, this is also a good trick to retidtribute some of it to a dry fastener. I think a good test of appropriate thickness is if you gently rub it with a paper towel, not a huge amount of the stuff will come off. No globs on the paper towel. Light smear on the paper towel would be expected.

I tend to prefer silver, for appearance reasons, on the dip-spun hardware, since it's a similar color match. I've had it harden and crumble only on a turbocharger turbine housing, which had ungodly temperatures. Copper was the solution there.

On overtorquring, my feeling is if you've stripped a fastener from overtorquing, it's probably more an issue of having the wrong torque spec than it is of using anti-seize. You can develop a feel and notice the fastener start to yield. Porsche Boxster fasteners are generally all high-strength steel parts, (e.g., lots of metric grade 10.9 hardware), and have fairly high torque specs. Grade 8.8 hardware, seemingly common on many other makes, would be unusually soft on a Porsche Boxster. Maybe just because porsches are extreme engineered for performance?

As others have mentioned, it's also messy stuff. You can wear thin rubber gloves, but they will get torn up after doing a bunch of anti-seize smooshing. You'll need to clean your hands or gloves up frequently when working with the stuff. Even handling anti-seized fasteners can transfer some to your hands or gloves. Like I said before, it's labor intensive.

It's good practice to also clean the fastener very thorough before applying the anti-seize. My favorite for that is brake parts cleaner in a spray can. The acetone will eat up rubber gloves, even nitrile. I recently discovered than some chlorinated brake parts cleaners (not available in all states.. banned in California, I believe) clean just as well as the acetone solvent, and yet the nitrile gloves will last. If there is any hard corrosion to clean up, you may need to also wire brush it. Solvent clean, wire brush, thin anti-seize application, you can make older fasteners perform better than most new dry-assembled fasteners. It just will never rust with the anti-size. There is no capillary space for the water to creep into. And even if water did get there, the zinc or sacrificial material in the anti-seize will corrode first, protecting the solid metal parts. (Sort of like how the zinc anode on the bottom of an aluminum boat hull protects the hull from any corrosion.)