Installed New Studs in Rear Hubs

The hubs come from Ford with the wrong size studs. I’m not sure why they couldn’t just use these, but the kit comes with smaller 1/2-20 studs. You can see the difference between the old (on the left) and the new on the right.

Installing this was much more of a pain than the instructions would have you believe. It’s pretty trivial to knock out the old studs with a hand sledge, but the instructions have you use a lug nut and washer to draw the new stud into the hub. The problem is that it takes substantially more force to turn the lug nut than I could apply (and I’m quite a bit stronger than the average person). With an unlubricated lug nut, I could easily reach the recommended torque (100 ft-lb) long before bottoming out the stud. I ended us lubricating the studs with ARP Assembly Lubricant and using an impact wrench to draw the stud into place before applying a final torque with a torque wrench. It was a little bit of a pain to clean all of the lubricant out of the threads, but it was worth it given how easily it set the studs. I probably should have taken these down to the TechShop and used their large arbor press to press them in, but it’s done now.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *