Aftermarket wheel studs are a good thing. I found out the hard way :(

[shralp]

Thought I'd post a cautionary tale of woe from my recent season ender at the track.  A good friend up in British Columbia owns a 911 Cup Car (997), and is a member at the Area 27 racetrack. He invited me to bring the track car up for a few days.  With guest privileges all I had to pay for was daily insurance at $100 CDN so it was pretty hard to say no!  

The layout at Area 27 is gorgeous and a joy to drive for sure.  That said, it was completely new to me and the morning sessions were tricky learning the race line.  I was also having horrible grip issues with an older set of Hankook RS4 tires that were giving me fits.  I decided to swap on my new Continental Extreme Contact Force set right before lunch and it was like night and day.  I was starting learn the race line, grip was back, and I was starting to pass other cars.  

Half way through my second session with the Continentals, I had just apexed a tight right hand corner, (one of only two lower speed corners at the track, the rest are high speed sweepers), I heard loud SNAP! followed by an immediate loud BANG!!  I felt left rear corner of the car get low and out of my peripheral vision I saw my LR wheel launching off into the infield.  Luckily I was just getting back on the power and had the car relatively straight going about 50 mph.  With the left rear corner sitting on brake rotor I skidded to a stop half on track and half in the grass.  Really lucky that this didn't happen on a high speed corner or a blind one as everyone coming behind me was able to see well.  Once I was safely able to get out of the car it was painfully clear what had happened.  All 5 wheel studs had sheared in half launching the wheel into space  

Amazingly we were able to put a 2x6 under the rotor and use it as a sled as we slowly winched the car into the infield and up onto my trailer without doing any additional damage to the car.  I spent the rest of the day riding shotgun in my buddys Cup Car which at least was some rowdy fun consolation.

I mean, I know aftermarket wheel studs are a thing but wow, I've never seen or heard of this happening going on 15 years driving this car on track.  Based on what I'm doing with the car and the fact that most of the cars I see at the track are running OEM wheel studs, it just never crossed my mind that I should upgrade them.  So yup, that's on me for sure...

Final damage tally: An Apex ARC-8 rim, Continental tire, new rotor ring and hat, (thank god the caliper is ok, just some beef jerky to Dremel off and its good to go, call it a battle scar!), and a new CV axle.  My nice Whiteline bits are thankfully ok but when everything compressed, it bent the shit out of my now unobtainable Perrin sway bar mount.  My tuner was able to bend it back into shape and we buttressed that whole system by adding Anderson Design & Fab sway bar reinforcement brackets so its plenty locked down now.  My unobtainable ancient Perrin mid and Y-pipe too a big hit as well.  They were able to get it relatively back in shape but its a temporary fix.  I'm swapping in a Nameless mid/Y this winter.  Considering I've had the Perrin on since '08 I think its done its duty!  Lucky break again, my Prodrive muffs made it thru ok with just a some bending of the lip at the back of the can.  

So thats my tale of woe.  I guess the lesson to be learned here is that you've really go to be methodical with upgrades if you're gonna push a car hard.  Even the little stuff, like wheel studs, can bite you in the ass eventually if they are not up to the task.  ARP studs in all 4 corners fixed that!  Really happy that the body sustained very little damage.  The rear clip popped back on fine and there is just a bit of wave in the quarter panel, probably from when the wheel jammed upward before launching off.  If you look in just the right light you can see it but its virtually invisible.  The plastic dogleg just ahead of the wheel did get ripped off.  It was completely gravel hammered from 18 years of use so I just bought new ones and wrapped them in matte black vinyl.  Actually looks better than before!

A few pics of the carnage and repair below... 

[Pleides]

Hey man, just going through the regular life of a track car, I guess! It doesn't surprise me that unsprung components of all shapes and sizes wear out from track use. Cornering forces with sticky tires are no joke! Glad to hear you made it out alive and that the car will be good to go for the next track session 

[Scubaboo]

That was sad to read, small consolation but it could have been much worse!

Going back together nicely.  I think Madrig has just the thing to take care of that body damage. 

[Max Capacity]

Maybe a lesson to others, who are thinking about tracking their car.  Question, did you change the offset with those wheels ? If so, could that have put more stress on the studs ?

[blackobxt]

Oooofffff at least it doesn’t look like it got the quarter too bad

[Enlight]

Thanks for sharing, I've never heard of this happening. What kind of width are you running on your tires? I don't think I'm at risk with 225 summers.

[silverton]

That's wild buddy! I've been curious how many ugga dugga's it takes to damage a stud in a way to do this.  Do you use wheel spacers?

[shralp]

Yup teachable moment for me for sure!  So yup was actually running 3mm spacers on this set up when it happened.  I tend to never run spacers and wouldn't ever go more than 3mm but in this case, I discovered that the Continentals 255/40/17, even though they are slightly smaller sectional width on paper, are actually marginally wider than the Hankook RS4's I'm used to running.  The side wall was ever so slightly rubbing on the spring collar of my KW coilovers up front.  3mm was enough to give me some wiggle room.   Hard to say if this was a huge factor or not as 3mm is pretty widely regarded as safe. 

What I can say however is that my records show that the LR hub had never been replaced on the car.  The RR was done in 2018 and the fronts every few years because the heat loading on track would wreck them.  Now that I've got proper ducting I don't see that being a big issue going forward.  Can't say with 100% assurance that the LR was original but certainly can't find it in my records.  

A rough theory is that swapping out the other 3 corners on a semi regular basis kept the wolves at bay enough that the studs never had a chance to fail before getting replaced.  The LR however, unsure on the replacement interval and perhaps this, along with the 3mm spacer was just too much for it to handle.  These Apex's are ET42 offset, (before the 3mm spacer).  

Edited December 11, 2023 by shralp

[tehspud]

My autocross experience (on my BRZ) taught me that the stresses from those wheels + just swapping wheels a lot every weekend or so is enough to kill the factory studs quickly. I went through a couple studs in one season before replacing everything with the ARP extended studs. 

Replacing all the studs is still on my to-do list for the LGT. This thread is probably enough motivation to get it done in the spring before the autox season starts again. 

[Scubaboo]

16 hours ago, tehspud said:

My autocross experience (on my BRZ) taught me that the stresses from those wheels + just swapping wheels a lot every weekend or so is enough to kill the factory studs quickly. I went through a couple studs in one season before replacing everything with the ARP extended studs. 

Replacing all the studs is still on my to-do list for the LGT. This thread is probably enough motivation to get it done in the spring before the autox season starts again. 

How did you find out?  Hopefully not the hard way like the OP?

I am in the group that didnt know they could fail like that.