Studly

This Saturday the plan was for Scat to cruise over and we’d continue working on the grill area of his sled. The rally FX was still in the garage as it was when I got it towed home. The only thing I had done was pull the CV shafts and put in a spare set scavenged from the carcass FX. I however hadn’t tightened anything down, so before Scat showed up, I torqued everything down to spec. As long as I had it up on stands and half the wheels off, I figured it’d be a good idea to rotate wheels. Charged up the air and hit the lug nuts. Odd, one was being slow. The other 3 spun right off. This last one wasn’t. This is the first time my IR impact gun was having problems and I was pretty perplexed.

Hit the nut with propane torch to heat it up & hopefully break the nut loose. Hit it with the impact gun again and still didn’t budge. Switched to the breaker bar again. OK, the movement we were getting with the breaker bar wasn’t the nut moving, it was the stud twisting and finally failing and shearing off. Curses! Just call us Team Can O Worms!

Fortunately I had four left over ARP studs from when I replaced the previous FX’s safety hazard studs. A happy happenstance. I recall the rear studs being easy to change, so we set out to get them changed out. Get the brake caliper and rotor out of the way exposes the hub. The hub easily unbolts, but we decided to disturb as little as we could, since I did not have any replacement seals. We debated for a little on whether to change just the broken stud, Scat said if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But I figured as long as we had it apart and I had four studs handy anyway, change them all for peace of mind. I’m glad we did because when Scat drilled into broken stud for a pilot hole for the gear puller, I was surprised at how easy the drill went in, seemed awefully soft steel!

The broken stud took a little work to get out, once we made that pilot it was all easy. Installing the new exended length stud was easy enough using a lug nut and thick spacer to pull it into place.

Not my rims!

The other three studs and extracted and replaced in short order. Those studs are in and are as pimp as studs could be for the racer crowd. I dare say the rims would probably fail before these ARP studs. Don’t laugh, we’ve seen that happen at rally cross, granted the rims were rusty.

The only problem now is I need open ended lug nuts now since these studs are so long. After lunchbreak we spun by Napa and they found me a bunch. They are kind of small, but they’ll work for now.