Replacing Broken Front Wheel Studs

[Raven33]

I had intended to take photo's as I did the work, and write it up into a guide - but alas I was too focused to remember to grab the camera (yeh focused, that's what I was)

So I had a broken wheel stud on the front drivers side wheel

- took the wheel off, removed the 2 18mm bolts that hold the calliper on

- removed the rotor and begun working on removing the broken stud

- I'd been told the basics behind removing the stud by a tyre monkey at Bob Jane T-Mart, as per his instructions got out the hammer and started banging away

- that sucker was in there tight, and not having a decent sized hammer was no doubt making things harder

- tried to get the WD40 working for me, but it didn't seem to be helping much...

Then the craziest thing happened .... I had an idea!!

What I wanted was to make the stud smaller than it was, and of course the best way to do that is to cool it down.

As the freezer wasn't an option, I started racking my brain for ways to cool the stud, but not the hub (i guess that's what it's called) - as I don't live in a science lab, there was no dry ice at hand.

But I did have the next best thing - a can of butane lighter fluid.

The liquid/gas will turn almost anything white with condensation on contact, it will also make most surfaces so cold, it will hiss and crackle when you touch it with your hand.

So I sprayed the damaged wheel stud with the butane, waited for a minute or so, then sprayed it again - just to make sure that it was cold all the way through.

After making sure there was no butane smell in the area where I was working, I gave the stud a half assed love tap and to my amazement the damn thing moved, another quick tap a little harder than the first and BAM stud is out - That was easy.

So the moral of this story is - if the big hard stud won't come out of the tight hard hole, give it a cold shower of butane

I hope this info is helpful to someone out there at some point.... else my puns were for nothing.

-Raven

[GTRsean]

Nice work!

I mentioned in another thread about using air duster can upside down, same thing. And also heated up the area around the stud to make it easier to tap out.