stripped wheel stud help. please...............

silverbullit_gt · Sep 28, 2006

Ok, I have been riding on this problem for 2 years now..my front wheel/tire is so out of balance now and the tire is slick after only 14,000 miles. My 99 GT has chrome bullitt rims. The driver front wheel has a stud that is stripped loose from the backside of the hub. The chrome lugnut is cross-threaded. The thing just wiggles in the wheel. I have taken it by a couple of shops, they are all scared of messing up my wheel. They say a cutting torch will discolor/ damage the chrome. At this point I just need to get the frigging wheel off the car. I need to replace the front tires bad. Brakes haven't been looked at in 2 yrs but seem fine. Now a question for the mechanics...just wondering..if the brake line were disconnected from the caliper, the center cap removed from the wheel, the dust cap removed, the spindle nut removed. What else would be holding the wheel/rotor/caliper/ hub on the spindle? I think that if all this were removed together, the back of the stud could be cut off the back of the hub with a cutting wheel. Also is there a much simpler solution than all that wrenching? The lug nut/stud will pull out from the wheel about an inch or so, as the lugnut was about halfway off when it seized up. Any help/ suggestions / offers to help me fix,etc. will be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.
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99 GT vert , chrome bullitts, k&n fipk, mac h-pipe, flows, b&m shift kit, all synthetics, CDC lightbar, Mach1 grill and chin spoiler. 85 GT 4bbl 5 spd. o/r h-pipe, flowmasters, eibach springs, hurst shifter 4" cowl hood....Mustangworld Select Stangs
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Mel96GT · Sep 28, 2006

Can you get a Dremel and cut around the stud behing the lugnut? Once you cut a groove around the whole stud you can snap it off.

BooWFO · Sep 29, 2006

umm
How you gonna get the center cap off with the wheel attached to the car?

Does the lugnut just freely spin on the stud?
If not 1/2 breaker bar LONG piece of pipe and try to SNAP the stud.

Option 2. Drill the lugnut out. take a drill and drill out the center of the lugnut and the stud to get it off.

Option 3. cut wheel off of stud.

00FobraR · Sep 29, 2006

I've had to deal with this problem before also. The best possible way is time consuming but less likely to damage the rim. If when you take off the rest of the lug nuts is there play between the rim and the spindle, if there is some room and you can get your hands in between the spokes of the rims it might be possible. What i did is I got a hacksaw blade and cut it long enough so it would fit inside the rim with me grabbing it from in between the rim spokes. You have to stick the blade in between the rim and the spindle reach in between the wheel spokes and saw away little by little. Time consuming and your hands will probably hurt but it will eventually give. I choose this route over power tools and torches because I didnt want to damage my wheels.

Disturbed One · Sep 29, 2006

I know what your talking about and I've seen it happen once before. The guy that fixed the problem at work ended up taking a small drill bit, made a hole in the center of the lugnut/stud. Took the next size drill bit and made the hole bigger and so on and so forth to the point to where it was about the same size as the stud I believe to get it off. I didn't see the end of it.

You can try to do it that way or like you said, get a dremel or some kind of cutting tool and get behind the hub and cut the back side of the stud off from there.

Kurgan · Sep 29, 2006

You said the stud is stripped from the REAR of the stud? Do you mean the knuckles that hold the stud into the spindle are stripped? So that means the wheel stud is flopping around loosely inside the spindle with a stripped lugnut attached on the outer end with the wheel attached?

If you can press that stud in far enough to get the head of the wheel stud to stick out of the back of the spindle, and you have enough room to get in there while the car is jacked up and the wheel is turned, cut the head of the wheel stud off with a metal cut-off wheel on an electric or air dremel tool or a grinder (careful of all the sparks). Then you can yank the stud out by the lugnut at the outside "front" of the wheel, remove the wheel, and replace the wheel stud.

Mike97gt · Sep 29, 2006

you might just have to sacrfice that wheel. you will not be able to take everything off as a assembly, plus the labor for all of that work would cost more than buying all four rims for your car. So unles you can get behind it and cut it will a hacksaw your going to have to buy a new wheel. I have seen this happen before and thats what we had to do in my shop.

all the drilling for that drilling method somebody suggests would cost you more than the wheel so I would not do that, I knwo I would want a lot of labor to spend all that time drilling and to cover the cost of a lot of drill bits I would have to trash.

I don't see how you can get a cut off tool back there to cut the back end of the stud off, not with the rotor on the hub..

The possible thing I think could be cost effective is to get a slide hammer with a vice grip and pull on the stud and hope that it redigs back into the hub, if you can get it to dig back in then you might be able to gently heat it and then work the nut off the stud.

I seriously think the most cost effective way if the above suggestion don't work is just to ignore possible damage to the wheel and just get a replacement. I would not take the job on myself if you were unable to except damage to the wheel.

BeelzebubSOB · Sep 30, 2006

BooWFO said:
Option 2. Drill the lugnut out. take a drill and drill out the center of the lugnut and the stud to get it off.

I ran into that problem a couple times when I worked for a dealership.I basically removed the rest of the lugnuts,pulled outward on the wheel which helped keep the nut and stud from spinning and drill it.Takes a little time,but if everything goes ok you can get it done with no damage to the wheel.Good Luck.

Mike97gt · Sep 30, 2006

BeelzebubSOB said:
I ran into that problem a couple times when I worked for a dealership.I basically removed the rest of the lugnuts,pulled outward on the wheel which helped keep the nut and stud from spinning and drill it.Takes a little time,but if everything goes ok you can get it done with no damage to the wheel.Good Luck.

I have never tried that way but if he can find somebody willing to try it it should work, I just think depending on where he lives the shop might want more labor than the wheel is worth. I am thinking of what will be cost effective. Hell if he can get that done or the other way I said above done for under a hundred bucks I would go for it.

at my work our labor rate is 93 per hour so even if they charge 2 hours of labor to remove it and then install a new stud that might be more than the wheel is worth. Plus I know we would be really worried about damaging the wheel that would cause us to jack up the price some if we were going to be held responsible for the wheel

BeelzebubSOB · Sep 30, 2006

svttech76 said:
I have never tried that way but if he can find somebody willing to try it it should work, I just think depending on where he lives the shop might want more labor than the wheel is worth. I am thinking of what will be cost effective. Hell if he can get that done or the other way I said above done for under a hundred bucks I would go for it.

at my work our labor rate is 93 per hour so even if they charge 2 hours of labor to remove it and then install a new stud that might be more than the wheel is worth. Plus I know we would be really worried about damaging the wheel that would cause us to jack up the price some if we were going to be held responsible for the wheel

Yeah,more than likely unless he knows someone at a shop that would cut him a break,they will probably charge a couple hours labor and then parts on top of that.If the knurled part of the stud spun in the hub and ruined the hub then I suppose you will be looking at another $200 at least.

sgarlic · Oct 1, 2006

Don't pay someone to do this.

You'll have to drill most of the stud out (use 2 small vice grips to hold the lugnut still) first. Leave a little of the stud in there and use a punch and a hammer to smash the remaining portion of the stud out the back. Those studs are pretty weak, but use a quality drill bit so you don't break the bit off in there.

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