bludroptop said:Hacksaw the head off of an appropriately sized hardware store bolt - custom wheel hanger for a buck or two. Make a few of them for redundancy if you misplace things.
I've installed studs on competition vehicles but I typically stick with bolts for the street cars.
Most inner tie rod ends are 14x1.5.
Many wheel bolts are 14x1.5
adam525i said:So last August at the Glen a number of cars broke studs that needed to be extracted and replaced. This was a BMW CCA event so lots of wheel bolts in the pits. I asked our group who had ever broke a wheel bolt and nobody had but breaking studs seemed almost commonplace. I'm sure part of that is more cars on the racier end of things are running studs and being pushed harder but there were still lots of heavy M3/4's rolling around on stock hardware with sticky tires not having any problems.
So other than it is slightly easier to mount a tire (which matters for a race car where super quick tires changes are important) why would I actually want to spend the money to convert to studs for my track/autocross only car? Seems like an expensive way to make an important system less reliable
Agreed. There is a reason why the German engineers went this route. Besides, I don't find it to be particularly difficult to mount my wheels with bolts. My TTS comes with a plastic "stud" that you can thread into the hole temporarily to make it easy to line up the wheel on the hub.
ericstewart said:adam525i said:So last August at the Glen a number of cars broke studs that needed to be extracted and replaced. This was a BMW CCA event so lots of wheel bolts in the pits. I asked our group who had ever broke a wheel bolt and nobody had but breaking studs seemed almost commonplace. I'm sure part of that is more cars on the racier end of things are running studs and being pushed harder but there were still lots of heavy M3/4's rolling around on stock hardware with sticky tires not having any problems.
So other than it is slightly easier to mount a tire (which matters for a race car where super quick tires changes are important) why would I actually want to spend the money to convert to studs for my track/autocross only car? Seems like an expensive way to make an important system less reliable
Agreed. There is a reason why the German engineers went this route. Besides, I don't find it to be particularly difficult to mount my wheels with bolts. My TTS comes with a plastic "stud" that you can thread into the hole temporarily to make it easy to line up the wheel on the hub.
On a race car the studs just make way more sense. I've typically got the wheels off the car 5 or 6 times per race weekend, that would be a serious PITA with the bolts. You definitely don't want to be dealing with them if you're changing tires in a pit stop.
On my E46 M3 I life the hubs and wheel bearings at 30 hours, so the studs get changed at the same time (bimmerworld race studs). 200+ track hours on it now and haven't broken any.
In reply to dean1484 :
Since we've gon there, why do people call car engines "motors"? I was brought up that motors and engines were two very different things.
Never looked it up, but I lost faith in Webster's opinion, when "decimate" includes "to utterly destroy" as a definition. Uh, no. That's not what it means.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:why not swap to lug studs?
Reasons.
If one is careful with the lug nuts, not overtorquing and not using lug nuts that are threaded all the way to the base, they are perfectly fine, but bolts are a lot more hamfist-tolerant.
we always call that "sailor proof" 
that doesn't fit in the "+" category 
03Panther said:Since we've gon there, why do people call car engines "motors"? I was brought up that motors and engines were two very different things.
Some people would like there to be a distinction between them, but the common usage has always been to treat the two words pretty much interchangeably. In the early 1900s, most American car companies had the word "motor" in the name, even though they were building predominantly gas-powered vehicles. Ford Motor Company, General Motors, etc.
In reply to 03Panther :
Every parts catalog I've seen calls them "wheel studs" so I don't know where the term "lug stud" comes from.
Engines burn fuel, motors use electricity. It's really simple.
I agree the "decimate" thing is stupid but there's no oversight when writing a dictionary. You can publish a Swedish-English dictionary where the Swedish sentence "Will you please direct me to the train station?" translates to English as "My hovercraft is full of eels." and nobody can stop you.
Electric Porsches wear turbo badges now. Welcome to backwards land.
MrJoshua said:In reply to adam525i :
I'm curious how many of them went to studs because they were using spacers? That could be a contributing factor for breakage.
I plan to change my son's audi tt to studs. It has different width spacers front and rear with the appropriate length bolts. Some day either he, or someone else besides me is going to change the wheels and put the bolts in the wrong place. Then, the wheels are going to fall off one end, and the bolts are going to go right into the abs ring on the other
Yup. And if you don't have well fitting spacers and know how to check they can have a slight wobble. Even wheel to wheel from the same manufacturer you will have some spacers that are okay and some that have enough gap to be problematic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK0bzjInqWU
MrJoshua said:In reply to adam525i :
I'm curious how many of them went to studs because they were using spacers? That could be a contributing factor for breakage.
I plan to change my son's audi tt to studs. It has different width spacers front and rear with the appropriate length bolts. Some day either he, or someone else besides me is going to change the wheels and put the bolts in the wrong place. Then, the wheels are going to fall off one end, and the bolts are going to go right into the abs ring on the other
Exactly. If you don't check fitment on EVERY WHEEL you can have a bad day with spacers. Even among the same manufacturers there is enough batch variation you need to check.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK0bzjInqWU
FWIW the blue locktite is debatable. The issue is if you have too low of a temp the locktite melts on track and becomes a lubricant. None or paying attention to the melt point is important. There are variations on temp of blue locktite as well.
The other issue is spacers- spacers have enough variation in manufacturing and wheel fitment that you can't just order a set of hub centric spacers and call it a day. you have to check each one with the wheel it will be used on. search youtube for "MUST WATCH if you run WHEEL SPACERS - VERY important SAFETY tip!!!" its a bimmerworld video that the link keeps getting killed.
An unmentioned advantage of studs is that you aren't wearing out the threads in the wheel carrier, which is oftentimes aluminum and a lot harder to repair/replace than a set of studs.
I agree about @LanEvo's quality comments and have only ever used MSI studs, but I'll note that in my application (Porsche) MSI specs 60–70 lb-ft of torque for the studs. They also recommend replacement at least every two years. It's quite possible that folks suffering from broken studs aren't following an appropriate replacement schedule, or are using sub-standard quality studs, or big wheel spacers.
We played hell getting studs from BimmerWorld installed on my buddy's E46. There was an install torque value, that no matter how hard we "locked" the double nuts together for install, we always turned those two nuts before we got a click, even at low end of the torque range given for install (50-70lbft if I remember right). I was in the middle of my own projects that day, and when we both got frustrated, I went back to my project...
I have wheel bolts on my E46, and will stick with that for the foreseeable future. Extended length in the front for a 12mm spacer, stock in the rear. I don't find wheel install all that onerous. I usually stick one bolt through the wheel and lift the wheel with one hand on the wheel and the other on an impact, on that one bolt (on "low", of course 
) and just flail for half a second until that bolt finds home. The rest are easy.
Here we go again! lol
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