Some car mods should be easy. If you buy a set of wheels with the correct bolt pattern, hub, and offset they should have no problem fitting, right? Oh you’d think, but never underestimate the potential to have a bad day.
Lewin’s story on how to stop snapping Subaru wheel studs inspired Robn to point out that it’s not just Subaru owners who can have a really bad time in the wheel realm:
Years ago, I picked up some sweet, cheap 14-inch BBS basketweaves from an E30 BMW for my Honda Fit. Test fitted and everything seemed to check out. I refinished the wheels at home, got some new tires mounted, and then went to do the simple task of bolting them on the car. When tightening them up, that’s when I realized the wheel hub was just thick enough that I wasn’t comfortable with the reduced number of threads poking through the wheel. FOOL ME ONCE.
So I ordered longer studs from ARP and watched some YouTube videos at the time and it seemed easy enough to swap them in. When I went to pound out the stock studs to do the swap, I realized that Honda designed them with no clearance which prevented them from coming out – now I needed to remove the damn hub. FOOL ME TWICE.
So, I went ahead and did that. Bough two new front wheel bearings, and took the hub, bearings, and new studs to a local machine shop to pull and press everything back together. I put everything back on the car, and — extreme wobble. Somehow they messed up what I assumed would be one of their easiest jobs. FOOL ME THREE TIMES.
I was getting tired of this shit, and wasn’t about to go back to that place again. So, I decided to hit up a buddy who worked at a Honda dealer out of state. Figured it would be easier to buck up, do it right once and for all, and put this stupid project behind me. I went all in. I had him order me two new front wheel knuckles(!), hubs, bearings, and another set of ARP studs. And asked him to please have his mechanic assemble everything at the dealership and send me the fully assembled knuckles/bearings/hubs/studs. Pricy but foolproof. A couple weeks later the package arrived and I was ready to put the suspension back together and call it a day. Everything went back together just fine – until the ABS light wouldn’t go out. I double checked all the wires and connections, all good. That’s when I learned that the abs pickup is built into the Honda wheel bearings and they have to be installed with a particular side facing a particular way. And guess what – one (or both) of my bearings were most definitely not installed that particular way. FFS. FOOL ME FOUR TIMES.
Now I was so deep into this stupid wheel swap there was no turning back. Angry, dejected, defeated, I went to the local Honda dealership, explained everything, and said, please god just make it right. I can’t remember how much I ended up spending in total just to swap on a set of cheap wheels from Craigslist, but I’ll never get it back. Just like you’ll never get back the five minutes it took to read about my misery from 2009.
I’m angry on your behalf, Robn!
Matt wrote a bit of a silly post about how Hagerty isn’t doing Pontiac Aztek values any favor. Well, Otter offers a different perspective:
But how do we know that Galpin hasn’t amassed a huge cache of Azteks and used its captive auto hobbyist site to drive up Aztek values, even to the extent of pitching them as housing in the insane SoCal market???
But my favorite responses today came from the piece about the owner of Car and Driver and Road & Track purchasing Motor Trend, creating a buff mag singularity. From 2-Car Solution:
All the more reason to get my automotive news from this fine establishment.
Michael Beranek responds:
Really, I don’t trust any of the others anymore.
Torch/Streeter 2028.
Church fires back:
Clarke/Hardigree 2028 more like. And don’t give me that “must be born here” nonsense. Rules are meaningless now, so I’m sure we can swing it.
I like this election. I’ll take Adrian, Jason will go up against Matt. I’m just ending a day where I interviewed an RV engineer for a whole 40 minutes and then some. Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic image: eBay seller
“how do we know that Galpin hasn’t amassed a huge cache of Azteks”
David Tracy actually has a day Aztek and a night Aztek.
I hear Hollywood David Tracy never drives the same Aztek twice
I can feel you on the wheels. The rabbit holes we go to. I once had a small clunk in the right rear. Nothing major but I’m sensitive that way. What started off with replacing the rear shocks and UCA joint ended up with a complete suspension rebuild (all OEM so $$$) right down to spring insulators, knuckles, hubs, literally everything coming off the sub-frame and touching the wheels.Even though all was done by yours truly in the garage, all told was still almost as much as than the damn car is worth. And guess what, the freaking clunk is still there. Fuuuuuuuuu!
The thread from the other day, plus this one, make me miss the hubcentric wheels that VAG and Mercedes have traditionally used. If you swap wheels to something thicker, you just get new, longer lug bolts. Lugs nuts always bugged me, even though they’re the historical norm. I never thought the exposed threads should be a semi-permanent part of the hub itself. Lug bolts are so much easier than lug nuts all around. The rest of a typical German car, not so much 🙂
I hates me the bolts as you have to get a pointy bar to align the holes give me studs any day
As someone who does industrial machine design for a living, studs are the better choice:
A: Helps with alignment. You aren’t forced to try to line up holes with holes, you just drop (or in the car of wheels, set) one hole onto one post the way God intended it, and rough alignment is handled.
B: Studs are more easily replaced then threaded holes. Helicoil and the like are more challenging and time consuming than backing a stud out (or hamming it out).
C: Cheaper ‘consumable’ component- a nut is cheaper than a bolt.
D: Better load distribution on the fixture (hub). The head on the backside is better than just loading the threads. While you have to have a female part somewhere, you’re better off putting that where it is easier to replace.
Makes sense, but I will say I’ve never had any real trouble with alignment of holes using the bolts. Occasionally a PITA, but never a dealbreaker. I just like the simplicity of slightly longer bolts solving the problem from the OP above in a much more elegant manner. But what you’re saying is all valid.
I find getting the wheel on correctly with the shank style lug nuts on my 4Runner is more of a PITA than the lug bults on my Volvo. I hate those shank nuts with a passion, if you don’t have the wheel on exactly right when you tighten, get ready for steering wheel vibes.
Either could be worse. They could be old Mopar studs, where the passenger side has traditional threading, but the driver side is threaded backwards, AKA “RIGHTY loosey, LEFTY tighty.”
Dang. I just bolted 15mm spacers on the front of my SRT-4 so I could run turbo dodge wheels years ago and thought that was enough of a hassle.
I had a similar case on my 96 S10. I needed new tires and I found a set of Camaro steelies with the silver trim ring from a 5th gen Camaro on craigslist with brand new tires for about what it would cost to put tires on the stock wheels. I figured “both GM RWD, no problem”. Big problems. I was young, I wasn’t thinking much about lug pattern or offset or anything really. I just wanted them on. The offset was wayyyyy off. Like could barely turn the wheel. The bolt pattern was 0.5mm off, so they would bolt up but it was sketch. My buddy owned a diesel/offroad shop at the time. I had him build me a custom set of spacer/adapters CNC machined out of aluminum. That cost me like $500 and I still couldn’t turn to full lock, but it was driveable. The forest green truck looked amazing with those wheels but I ended up trading it in on an 03 CTS with a 5 speed and never looked back.