Help! Broke two studs in the middle of my road trip!

[vannatta20]

I am stuck in amarillo Texas because my car suddenlynbroke 2 studs next to each other in the front wheel. I have ls1 brakes on my 68 bird. I just replaced those studs so something went wrong.I noticed the wheel is not perfectly centered on the rotor and I think that caused it to loosen up then break. Also the studs are not tight enough and they spin when torquing now. I stopped by a farmers house and welded the back sides to keep from spinning. Those welds will not hold if they back off again. Then I am screwed!!!! I had installed 7/16 studs and they were special ordered. I am not sure if I can get them locally here. What can I do to fix this? Can I buy 1/2 studs and drill the hub with a standard bit? Can anyone help me locally here?

[Apogee]

Are your hubs machined properly so that the rotor is fully seating against the hub flange? A quick way to check is to put a dab of grease on the flange of the hub and then clamping the rotor in place with a couple of lug nuts...you want the grease to be squished totally flat when you pull it back apart. If it's not, then the rotor isn't fully seated against the hub and that's probably why the wheel studs are breaking. Until you figure out why they're breaking, just throwing new studs at it is a gamble. To fix it correctly, you will need to resize the holes and find alternative wheel studs to suit. Changing them over the 1/2-20 screw-in studs is probably out of the question at this point since I figure it's safe to assume that the current holes are sufficiently larger than a .453" pilot drill for a 1/2-20 tap. You can get away with .005 to .010 larger and just lose thread engagement, but I wouldn't want to go much higher than that myself in such a critical application.

I'm not sure why you would have wheel centering issues assuming that you're running 60 degree tapered lug nuts and incrementally torquing them down in a criss-cross pattern to the proper specs (75-80 ft-lb).

Tobin
KORE3

[MonzaRacer]

Here is another thing if your wheels dont center on the hub you can have issues not doing the hub-centric mounting.
Another thing is when replacing wheel studs be very careful.
I work at Pep Boys and have seen wheel studs listed wrong for specific cars, even had the numbers swapped front to rear.
Honestly I have seen studs pull in half way or almost in and leave a tiny gap, then when driven the wheel forces it in the rest of the way and tada loose wheel.
I really dont like most ways of pulling the studs in as it helps stretch them.
I have a setup iam making the uses McGuard stainless nuts, coned seat cut off and appropriate heavy washers for spacers if studs have unthreaded portion coming through the hub.
Also I am working on a reasonably priced tool to help stud installation.
But as for another thing all of my books show cars with 7/16 stud using 90lb ft of torque.
As for press fit smooth shoulder studs can only handle about 0.003 to 0.005 but if your hubs are slightly worn most times a 0.010 to 0.015 will pull in. also make sure if your putting in new studs the splines should atleast start a 1/4 of the way in with out being pulled in.
Now if it has a hub and you can get some serious force on it larger interference may be able to be installed.
Now if you have cut down drum hubs you might be able to go to a metric stud, and get it to fit tight and deal with it at home.
Good Luck.

[vannatta20]

Well I got it fixed. I got 1/2 studs and got the proper sized bit and drilled out the holes. I then drove the new studs in with a hammer and made sure they were fully seated. I had problems with the old studs because I didn't remove the hub to fully seat the new studs and hoped that the lug nuts would pull them in the rest of the way.

[John Wright]

Are your hubs machined properly so that the rotor is fully seating against the hub flange?I had to chamfer the edge of my hubs and also the edge of the rear axle flanges to get the rotors to sit flush.

Because of this:
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2010/09/edgethathitsaxleflange-1.jpg