Nick is an engineer from Minneapolis-St. Paul. He came to me with a simple question this week. His buddy just bought a new Subaru. They’re famous for breaking wheel studs—an incredibly frustrating problem. Eager to avoid time-consuming repairs down the line, Nick asked what he could do to prevent the issue.
Around these parts, we love posing questions for Autopian Asks. When Nick reached out to me with his question, though, I realized we’ve never done Autopian Answers before. I figured I’d answer his query as best I could, and let you all chime in with your own knowledge, too.
So, what is to be done? Let’s explore how to best avoid wheel stud failure in a modern Subaru.
@rainbowdefault.bsky.social a buddy just bought a new Subaru and I’d like him to be able to service the wheels without the studs snapping. Is there anything you can do to prevent it? A certain grease or torquing to the right level?
— Nick S (@nottooserious.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 2:44 PM
Make It (Not) Snappy
Let’s start with a basic definition of the issue. The wheel stud is the threaded steel part on which you tighten the wheel nuts. On most cars, these are lifetime items that never need replacing. However, Subaru has gained a reputation in recent years for weak wheel studs that snap relatively easily. Our own Matt Hardigree had this experience with his not-too-old Forester and he wasn’t alone.
Head over to the forums and you’ll find all kinds of complaints. “Yeah, those stock Subaru studs are about as strong as pretzel sticks,” says one owner. There are plenty of others out there telling similar stories.
They can be a pain to replace, too. You need to remove the wheel, brake caliper, and rotor to get at the studs, then you need to deliver many good whacks from a sledgehammer to get the damaged part out. This can be easy or excruciating depending on how seized they are. Finally, you need to wiggle the new stud into place and use a stud installing tool (or stack of washers) to press fit it into the hub. This is easier said then done at times—I’ve had to do this job on a Honda Civic, and it wasn’t much fun..
Nick says his friend’s car is brand new, so you would normally expect the studs to last a good couple decades. However, Subaru’s wheel studs have a particularly poor reputation. Is there something especially bad about them?
As it turns out, the experts over at Art’s Automotive have looked into the problem. The Bay Area shop specializes in Japanese automobiles, and found a high number of Subaru studs were failing in the field.
It’s far from the worst job, but it can really put a crimp in your weekend if you’re regularly driving in the Snow Belt.
Their article covers what makes Subaru wheel studs different, and proposes a theory as to their common failure. Unlike other Japanese brands, Subaru’s wheel nuts use an M12 x 1.25 mm thread, rather than the more common M12 x 1.5 mm thread. The second number—1.25 mm—refers to the thread pitch. Basically, the threads are more closely packed on the Subaru studs. If you measure from the peak of one thread to the next, you’d get 1.25 mm (0.049 inch) on a Subaru wheel stud. Nissan uses the same pitch too, but for some reason, weak studs appear to be more of a Subaru issue.
All in all, for two studs of the same nominal diameter, the one with finer-pitch threads is usually stronger in terms of tensile strength. That’s because a larger thread pitch also creates a deeper cut, which reduces the amount of metal able to take load. You’d thus expect Subaru’s fine-pitch studs to be stronger, not weaker, and more resistant to overeager mechanics with impact guns, too. And yet!
The thing is, finer-pitch threads do come with drawbacks, too, as noted by Art’s Automotive. They’re more likely to suffer galling, where small bits of metal shear off the threads and create little balls that can jam everything up. They’re also easier to damage, easier to cross-thread, and more likely to seize due to excess friction during high-speed tightening. There’s the smoking gun—while the finer-pitch threads make for technically-stronger studs, they also make for studs that are more likely to fail when using impact guns or during careless assembly. Of course, it could also be that Subaru just uses cheap lug studs made out of crappy materials, but that’s harder to investigate without a university-spec laboratory on hand.
The Solution
So what is to be done? Well, Art’s Automotive has a simple solution. They suggest using anti-seize or a touch of grease on lug nuts, in order to reduce friction. This should prevent seizing or galling, which is often a precursor to snapping a lug nut. Lug nuts are supposed to be installed dry, but this should be perfectly safe as long as you keep torque to the right spec. Technically, lubricant on the threads increases the total tensile load felt by the stud when tightening to a given torque, but as long as you’re sticking to the proper torque spec, you’re unlikely to hit any issues. Avoiding mechanics or tire shops that don’t use their impact tools safely is key, too.
John Cadogan explains how to safely choose the right torque spec when using anti-seize on your lug nuts.
Installing the lug nuts more slowly is also a good habit to get into. Our grandmammies and grandpappies couldn’t be doing with all this electric nonsense. They used good old-fashioned tire irons and took their time doing so.
Beyond that, you can always go the upgrade path. ARP makes studs that are well-regarded for their extra strength. I wouldn’t bother pre-emptively ripping out all the studs and changing them, though. Don’t make work for yourself! If you’re doing a brake or wheel bearing service down the line though, that might be a good time to change over.
In any case, if you do snap a stud, you won’t be the first Subaru owner to do so. You’ll get knowing nods from others at the parts store when you go in to pick up replacements. I hope this puts you at ease and helps your buddy have many carefree years of motoring in their Subaru. Not everyone does, of course, but we should always hope for the best!
Images: Subaru, via Youtube Screenshot
It would be easy to clamp a Subaru stud into a vise and beat on it with a heavy hammer to see how damaged it gets, then do the same with a stud from something else and see how they compare. Not hard enough? Too hard (brittle)? Some type of stress-riser in the design? 15 minutes real-world testing and we wouldn’t have to be suggesting “crappy material” while actually having no idea. Certainly, hardness testing, at-least, is available at any good tool-and-die shop. Next thing, please remove wheel hubs and place the flange on some kind of solid backing to hammer out studs instead of having all that shock go into the bearing set and then thinking well maybe you didn’t damage it any. Next, for those who claim lubricating studs increasing tensile pull so much that it could be a contributing factor to failure, the friction where the nut contacts the wheel is far, far greater. Lube the studs. And more, with most studs the force required to fully seat the stud when installing new ones is also enough to damage the threads…at-least use a tool, never-ever a stack of washers to crank-the-hell out of a nut against. Again, it’s best to have the hub removed and either use a press, or hammer onto the head if you have to, but with a solid backing which fits closely to the stud diameter because you can bend the flange otherwise. Not fully seating a stud is a total invitation to the next failure.
I had to actually argue about all this with a supposed race car shop once. ??? It all seems like common sense.
I don’t have a Subaru but most simple mechanical failures can have the cause figured out with enough analysis.
Been waiting for question and answer for quite as while now. Ramen!! Daily sounds good.
They are being over torqued. I saw a reddit thread on studs (not Subaru specifically) last weekish and most mechanics were saying they use an impact to about 80-100 ft-lbs and then use a torque wrench to get to the final value, so they do a good job. Well that means they habitually blow by spec for Subaru. The manual for my 2003 Legacy says the lug nut spec is 58 to 72 ft-lbs. The 2005 Legacy manual says 81 ft-lbs.
If you always do it by hand by yourself and use a torque wrench, you should never have a problem.
Helps a ton if you hand tighten all so there is 0 distance left. I trust the guns torque more than the wheel will find flat and center on the lugnut cone. Had a car w problems warping the rotors w lugnut torque so still do the cross pattern like it still matters.
Never broken a wheel stud, but the studs on the back of the turbo did it from New. Like test install a downpipe, likely replace one or two.
I never once thought about the heat generated during installation and how that could cause seizing or galling. I typically use the minimum torque needed when using any tool to tighten by virtue of only pulling the trigger far enough or twisting hard enough to just make things turn until snug, then do the actual tightening/torquing, so I’ve never really had anything seize that way. However, I’ve sure as hell burned my fingers on a piping hot nut or bolt that I’ve removed by squeezing that impact trigger all the way down when removing. I really should have made that obvious heat connection before. Duh-me.
One small addition to this article. Clean Those Threads! Or, if you really want a tight hold on any threads, sprinkle some good old ferrous oxide on them. I really does an amazing job of making later removal a hellacious nightmare. If you do it right, you can get both galling and seizing.
Uh, okay, maybe one more addition (not having read other comments, this may be redundant). Stud removal tools exist in lieu of sledge hammers. I bet loaners from parts stores exist too. I’d rather do that than risk maybe cracking a bearing race or something.
“Lug nuts are supposed to be installed dry, but this should be perfectly safe as long as you keep torque to the right spec. Technically, lubricant on the threads increases the total tensile load felt by the stud when tightening to a given torque, but as long as you’re sticking to the proper torque spec, you’re unlikely to hit any issues.”
I call B.S. on this conclusion. As you say, lubricating the threads without reducing torque increases tensile load. Increasing tensile load raises the stress inside the stud, which can induce failure in a stud that’s close to its yield point. At best, you’re cutting into the stud’s safety margin. But, as shown by this article’s premise, some studs can’t afford to lose such margin. Adding more load is not a solution to this problem. Especially on studs that have already been compromised by impact wrench abuse, raising the tensile load will decrease its fatigue life.
Also, with the higher clamping force, lubricated steel lug nuts can slowly bore through soft alloy rims. This doesn’t effect everybody, so YMMV.
TL;DR – if you’re going to lubricate your lug nuts, look up the difference between wet and dry torque values (a 25% reduction on wet threads is a good rule of thumb). Your nuts and your lugs will thank you for it.
My dad always put a couple of drops of oil (from his old-timey oil can) on each stud before he put the lugs back on.
I’m not sure what he would think of me going at them with my electric impact.
I’m with you – if there’s galling on the threads or an issue with misshapen threads it’s probably obvious. The lug nut should thread in and out easily by hand, and you can tell when you’re removing a lug that has an issue because it doesn’t. Cleaning it up and assessing the issue should be done, don’t just lather it up with anti-seize or grease.
Issues with the threads are going to require more torque to get the lug to the correct clamping force, grease lowers the torque, and in the end you have no idea whether you have a safely torqued wheel.
Are the subaru studs weaker than the norm? Maybe. Is there a factor (as others here have mentioned) of subaru drivers changing out wheels more often and increasing the chancing someone over torques them? Maybe. All I can say is that I never broke one on my FRS, but they are the only “Toyota” product I’ve heard people have trouble with, so it could be a Subaru stud issue. But I always hand tightened the lugs myself and never broke mine, so maybe it’s a used issue. So actually I don’t have anything useful to say other than conjecture.
Disagree. If a Subaru fastener can’t take a 25% overload then they really are absolute garbage.
If this was the random opinion of a commentator on a website it would be fine. But it’s not. It’s the professional opinion of a qualified engineer published by a business as actual advice.
It might be worth running this advice past your legal team to see how much liability you’re opening yourself up to.
My opinion, as a qualified mechanical engineer, is that I’ve not done any of the testing to back up any change from the OEM spec, so I can only recommend sticking to the OEM spec. They’ve done the calcs and a full validation programme so any failures following their advice are on them.
I used to write software for calculating clamp load in bolts. I then had to validate this with lab testing using strain gauge bolts and also destructive testing, often with wildly unpredictable results. There are safety critical bolted joints out there that I am personally liable for if they fail. I take this sort of thing very, very seriously.
The coefficient of friction for clean dry steel on steel is about 0.5 to 0.8. The coefficient of friction between lightly oiled steel and steel is in the region of 0.23. So randomly applying some sort of lube to the studs could increase clamp load (and therefore stud stress) by double, and potentially much more. So instead of your “25%” it could easily be an additional 117% or 247%, based on your published professional opinion.
Or maybe less, who knows without knowing the coating spec of either stud or nut, or the lube or the friction face of the wheel (which could be aluminium or steel or a nice thick layer of paint). I wouldn’t risk the liability myself.
Additional I’d say any critical part without a safety factor of two is incompetently designed, but the reason for that safety factor is to account for all the things that could go wrong (worst case abuse load, fit, material, environment, etc.). Planning to eat in to the safety factor is very hard to justify, for a qualified engineer publishing technical advice for a business.
The US is the country so litigious that they have to warn you that coffee is hot. Don’t tell them to overload their safety critical fasteners unless you’ve done the actual engineering to prove it’s ok.
Apologies for the long serious post.
Agreed 100%. Engineering isn’t typically glamorous. It’s pedantic so that people don’t get hurt.
Zero validation to back this up, Lewis. Can’t be publishing advice like this – people can go to the forums if they want misinformation
Am I the only nutter that applies white lithium spray grease to literally every threaded connection I come across? Never works loose when I don’t want it to, and always comes apart easily when I do want it to in my experience.
Every time I work on my car I apply some (a lot of) anti seize to each nut or bolt I’m taking off/ putting back on. Future me loves it.
I’m a firm believer in never seize, grease, assembly lube etc. based on application. A drop of oil on those lug nuts with the built in washers works wonders. I apply never seize to the backs of disk top hats an wheel faces.
Just don’t let a shop hammer the nuts down with an impact wrench. That’s really all there is to it. The only time a shop touches my car is for VA safety inspections and when I get home, I immediately loosen and re-torque each nut before they get a chance to weather on and end up stuck.
Same here in PA, I nearly immediately loosen and retorque.
Here’s my method, which has never resulted in a broken stud.
-impact gun off(it may seem more violent, but the little impacts are actually far less likely to cause a stud to deform. Learned this fact screwing into concrete)
-Anti seize, just a little bit. I’m in Canada, so also do the hub/rim interface ring as it tends to rust and require a persuader in the spring
-impact gun on with 80 ft/lb torque bar(or whatever is recommended on your Subi, mine is an Impreza)
-drive hard a few km(accel and brake) or drive normal for 50km
re-torque with torque wrench at 80ft/lbs
When I had a WRX the studs were broken so often by the shop (put down the impact, guys…) that I always had two spares in the car so they wouldn’t need to make me wait an extra day to repair their mistake.
I would rather the studs break off than have things get so bad that I have to take an angle grinder to something to remove a stuck nut.
Subaru studs just suck. I installed replacements after Costco broke some off during a tire installation. Each one was put in by hand and torqued to spec. One of the new ones snapped (along with some old ones) during the next tire rotation. I kept a bag of spares on hand to swap out as needed while I had that car.
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.
My condolences. That just went from bad to worse.
This is why I like reading about some of the modded offers on Shitbox Showdown. You just know there’s stories like this in there somewhere. 😉
same problem on the EK Civic. No room to put in the new stud.
I’ve forever done 100ftlb because it’s a number my dad told me to use. It’s convenient, easy to remember, and my torque wrench is seemingly the only non-metric tool I have in my toolbox. I’ve also put anti-seize on all the threads.
But, that being said, I’ve done work on all my cars: Subaru, Honda, Nissan, VW, Toyota. All set to 100ftlb.
Not broken a stud/bolt yet. Even when we had a Toyota Yaris.
Luck?
I’ve never broke a stud and I don’t use never seize or any lubricant and I run cars till their 15 years old in the rustbelt. I think it has to do more with shitty stud quality as long as you’re in the ballpark on the tq.
Yeah, this is 110% Subaru using crap metal. Those tire shops spend all day every day zipping wheels off and zipping them back on. If this was a technique problem you’d see a nice even distribution of broken studs across all makes and models. Nope. It’s just Subarus that are notorious for it.
Just wait till one breaks and then replace the whole wheel bearing assembly with an aftermarket unit. It’s less work than beating out 5 studs and pressing new ones back in. And you get a new bearing at the same time. And Subaru has history of wheel bearing issues so you can get those out of the way at the same time just in case.
Lewin, dude, we’ve been over this before: It’s easier said THAN done.
Then relates to time or order, and than refers to a relative comparison of size or scale.
From a complexity standpoint saying something then doing it no different than doing it first and then saying it. But it is usually much easier to talk about doing something THAN it is to actually do it.
I quit reading the article at that point, even though this is a topic of some interest to me (both kids own Subies). You lost me as a reader. The credibility of the article just died before my very eyes.
Is this an irrational pet peeve of mine? Probably. But you guys strive so hard to get the vehicle facts right, it’s a shame you don’t seem to care about getting the grammar right, too.
You need to draw the line somewhere.
Lewin’s chosen to die on this hill.
Looking forward to your correction the next time Hardigree talks about beating somebody with a stick tied to a carrot.
I actually let that one pass. I giggled a bit at it, and thought it was a little funny, but not offensive.
Unfortunately the then/than thing is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. My mother was raised by an English teacher, so the grammar stuff got drilled into my head from an early age.
On the one hand, maybe I need therapy. On the other, I’m not the professional writer here.
And don’t get me started on the local news anchor that said “borrowed it to” on the five o’clock news…
You would enjoy /s the news readers here.
It’s like English is a god damned 2nd language to them.
Don’t get me started on the shit they run at the bottom of the screen as well.
Apparently being able to spell is sort of black magic where I live…
I feel you. Just the other day the 6 pm weather forecast had a graphic listing “show showers”. It was still there for the 10 pm edition.
Our local idiots run the SAME damn crawl for a week at a time.
Really.
It takes a good murder or two before they bother to update it.
But my fav is them rerunning the same weeks old stories over and over. Especially after the trial has begun…they would be better off running lost cat stories featuring old cat ladies.
No offense intended to cat ladies, ok?
Old Cat Ladies?
Now that would be a fun party!
Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, and Anne Hathaway walk into a bar…
To be fair, there are are a few people who easily talk about doing something, and then they actually do it.
And, it has been a day and no one has bothered to fix the error. This is even more frustrating than its being there in the first place (possibly a typo)
Perhaps he has tried doing first, then saying, and has concluded that it is more difficult than saying then doing.
This of course is false. Throwing a ball over your shoulder, letting it bounce off the lamp, bounce off the desk once, and then knocking over the coffee so that it spills all over your coworker’s shirt, rolls along leaving a stripe of coffee on the presentation you just printed out then rolling under the couch, then saying that is what you did is much easier than describing the sequence of events in advance* (AKA calling your shot). In fact, a great premium is placed on predicting the future accurately. Predicting the past is not so much valued outside of politics.
I hope this clears things up.
*Saying you are about to initiate that particular sequence of events may make your reputation regardless of your success.
You don’t 😛
Just break them and replace as needed LOL
Never seize and a torque wrench.
I’ve use anti seize and a torque wrench on all my cars to avoid this problem. I also clean the brake hats and studs with a wire brush and apply anti size to both. I’m on my own time unlike a book rate mechanic.
I had a Suzuki SX4 that had a lug nut torque rating of like 60 ft/lbs. Basically every time I took it to a tire shop, the next time I needed to take a lug nut off it would just spin in the hub. The first frustrating part of this repair was drilling through the lug nut so you could remove the wheel. The second frustrating part was that on this vehicle, to “correctly” replace just one stud, you have to separate the hub/wheel bearing assembly and therefore probably install a new wheel bearing afterwards. After the first time doing this the “correct” way, I started to grind off one lobe of the new wheel stud so I could install it without separating the hub/wheel bearing assembly. I also never trusted anyone else to tighten my lug nuts. It was a good car but this is one of the reasons I don’t miss it.
Love – it’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru.
See, that’s the problem right there. They’re made out of love. They’re love studs.
I hate it when my love stud breaks his stud.
You work those nuts too hard you’ll break your stud.
Stud needs more lube.
That’s what she said? lol
rotated the tires on the Hummer this week, found 3 that were broke or more likely broke when I started taking them off. Rust on the exposed portion of the stud caused by the lug nut not covering the stud all the way and the holes being opened to allow the non self centering Hutchinson wheels would be the cause I believe. but also it sometimes seems to be caused a bit by anodic corrosion from dissimilar metals touching and then getting wet. that same thing that helps avoid the aluminum wheels from sticking to the iron Brakes is that anti-seize on all surfaces.
While I haven’t ever really had to do it on a car, I install the lug nuts on my trailers with anti-seize. They sit around too much and rust solid too easily. So yeah I don’t see anything wrong with slapping some goo on there, then just recheck the torque a couple times in the months following.
Is this seriously even a question? Put down the damned impact gun and pick up a jar of anti-seize and a torque wrench, you monkeys. <facepalm>
And also why I infinitely prefer the European method of using bolts (technically screws, but whatevs), not studs and nuts. I had the dealer monkeys put the lug bolts on my GTI on so tight it took a 4ft cheater bar and my 300lbs bouncing on it to break the mofo’s loose, and they survived just fine. And that in *FL* where salt and rust are not a thing – I shudder to even think what the torque on them was.
Studs/nuts have the advantage of holding the wheel in place during install of the wheel. Screws/bolts require either the use of a temporary stud hanger, or large enough hubs (and hub centric wheels). It’s not the end of the world for screws/bolts, but it is a clear advantage for studs/nuts.
I have the hub-centric solution and it’s been easy to use.
I had a Saab, but the wheels were so offset that they wanted to fall off the hub even though they were hubcentric. The large offset made the wheels want to tilt and fall off, so you had to keep a hand on them the whole time until you got a screw or two in.
My VW wheels sat on the hub just fine.
Just get these:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8NCR4M4?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
Alignment pins. Back the day BMWs came with them in the trunklid mounted tool kit. My 1-series has the same issue as most FWD cars, the offset makes the wheels want to fall off despite being hubcentric. These make it a doddle.
This minor issue absolutely does NOT outweigh all the disadvantages of studs and nuts, they are a complete pain in the ass to deal with when they fail. And they fail ALL the time, and not just on Subarus.
That’s exactly what I was talking about when I called it a “stud hanger” in the previous post.
And I’ve never had a stud fail on me; ever. My ’65 has studs, my ’13 Xterra had studs, and my current ’18 Outback has studs. I have zero problems with studs.
Oooh – you have owned *three* cars and never had a problem. I have owned better than *50*, I have dealt with enough bad studs to last a lifetime in salty rusty Maine.
I live in even saltier upstate NY. My city is typically in the top 5 for annual snowfall totals. We salt like we are trying to turn the great lakes into saltwater bodies.
And most of my cars have been screws, that’s why there’s only been three with studs.
Then that’s why you haven’t had the fun. Get more cars with studs and you will win the lottery eventually. Or maybe shops up there are smarter about being damned sure to put plenty of anti-seize on the things. I will say the big issue are cars that started down south then came up north. No anti-seize, gorilla mechanic, then a salt bath is a recipe for a bad time in the future. Then for super fun – make it those mofo lugnuts that have the thin chrome shell over them. The Devil’s work, those things.
If it’s so damn common, why do you have to work so hard to have it happen?
It wasn’t hard work at all – it was just about effortless every time. Go to remove lugnut – SNAP. @#$2$@@#$! A couple of them broke with no intervention on my part. Look at car, notice lug nut and half the stud are missing. *&*&^*%^&,. Universally on cars that *I* was not the last one to put the wheels on the damned thing.
ANY number of times is too many, and I have literally never seen nor heard of a lug bolt breaking, though I am sure a monkey with a big enough impact gun can manage that too.
If you’ve never had the fun of dealing with this – bless your heart.
I’m sorry but they don’t fail all the time. I was a mechanic for many years and broke 1 stud in all that time, and that was when I was young and didn’t know that Chrysler used to do LH threads. I’ve also owned more vehicles than I can count and haven’t broke any studs on them.
In the rustbelt? You lived a charmed life then. Note that I have never broken a stud putting a lugnut ON the car, but I have broken them taking the lugnut OFF after so-called mechanics put them ON. Any is too many, and I have never had an issue with a single lug BOLT despite having to use 4ft cheater bars and my 300lbs+ to get them off after the “pros” had at the car.
Could be the monkeys in the shop did not know how many Ugga Duggas actually result in the correct torque. actually getting a torque wrench adds time to the job and eats into the book time they get paid.
In theory, using a torque stick with an impact gun should work “OK”. In practice, even that takes practice and skill that evidently they were completely lacking, or they didn’t bother. There is simply no excuse, *especially* at a dealership. It takes literally two minutes to do this job *correctly*. Do you do slapdash work at YOUR job to save a couple minutes? I certainly hope not. As I said, monkeys. Plus it’s the sort of thing that gets dumped on the FNG who doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing anyway.
My fault for being lazy and taking advantage of the dealer’s cheap oil change service with a free tire rotation specials for three years instead of doing it properly myself. Never again.
And Torque sticks tend to work fine with some air tools and less so with others, but they are good to get you a lot closer, first time and avoid over-torquing which breaks studs as well.
There’s really just no excuse to not do it correctly when you are being paid to do a job. But flat-rate pay means corners will ALWAYS be cut.
My first Euro car was a used BMW and I was like “This is NICE!!” the first time I had to pop wheels off to do brakes. I definitely prefer the hub with lug screws style, even had my tire shop do the same and air gun them the first time I went in. I had to remind them to not hit em with the air gun when I went to get a rotation, I was on it with a big ol ugga dugga bar moving the whole damn car to get em loose.
Simply hold the nut and rotate the car around them.
Smack them with a hammer, several times.
Before trying to loosen them up.
Don’t care how many clever dog ads Subie makes either.
Never gonna buy one.
Best friend has one that is killing her financially, and it’s paid off.
And having to pay a ton for upgraded aftermarket studs, well that’s just bullshit.
But wish someone would just make a decent stud rather than this crap. YMMV of course.