Breaking wheel studs

[wythors]

Howdy. New guy, first post.

My wife's driver is an 08 Adrenalin. A few months ago, one of the left front wheel studs broke off when I was rotating the tires. I was torquing it down by hand, and it broke off before it even started to get tight. Probably at less than 60 lb/ft. The dealership replaced it under warranty with no issues. Today we had to get a new set of tires installed and one of the right front studs did the same thing to the tire guy. I don't anticipate a problem getting it taken care of, but what the hell? I've worked in the car industry for a couple of decades and I've never seen studs break on a 17,000-mile car. An old, rusted out POS or something with cheapo aftermarket lugnuts, yeah. One I can live with. One on each side makes me nervous.

Anybody else had wheel stud problems on their late-model Sport Trac?

 

[techieman33]

I haven't read about any problems with the sport tracs, but there are a couple of members here who have had the same problem with newer f-150's.

 

[Mbrooks420]

Were the wheels ever taken off/put back on b y someone else? If so, maybe the lugs were way over-tightened.

 

[BrooklynBay]

Welcome to this forum! I would suggest that you replace all of the studs & lug nuts. Don't wait for them to break one by one. Buy a set of locking lug nuts where each nut is the locking type.

 

[04mach1]

Same thing happened to me not sure why.

 

[wythors]

Update: Just got back from meeting with the service manager at my local Ford dealer. I requested that Ford replace all of the studs for me. He stated he will have to contact the district rep to get approval.

In answer to the question, we bought the truck with 35 miles on it. The wheels have been off of it three times now, two by me, once by Discount Tire. All three times, a hand torque wrench was used to torque the nuts to 100 lb/ft.

The stud that broke is obviously (to me anyway) fractured, not twisted. The nut spins freely off of the broken shaft and the break is jagged, not smooth. The service manager even said that it looked like a side load problem, not a twist.