While doing some routine maintenance on our Suzuki Cappuccino, we noticed that the wheel nuts were not always spinning on and off smoothly. Some nuts would stick slightly as we ran them down with the impact gun. Others would spin down, but then never seemed to fully tighten: even when we used a torque wrench they never felt fully tight. Both of these symptoms indicate that our wheel hardware is worn out. If we didn’t address this, we risk stripped threads or sheared studs. Both of these could result in a wheel loss when driving, an extreme safety risk!
Suzuki and GM used this stud on a bunch of different cars, so replacing our 30 year old studs and nuts with OEM parts would have been super easy. But that’s boring and nobody here wants to read about that. So we decided to do it the hard way and find better studs.
After a bit of measurement and research we figured out that 90’s Honda wheel studs are a near direct replacement for the Cappuccino. They have the same knurl diameter and shank length so they will press into our hubs perfectly. You will notice that our packages have seen some wear and tear despite being unopened. That is because we picked each package up from a different seller on eBay desperate to get rid of their last pack of old studs. Laugh all you want but I saved $15 doing it this way! These studs are a direct replacement for Civics, Integras, Accords, and Preludes so you can find them at nearly any parts vendor.There is one issue with using Honda studs and that is thread pitch: Suzuki used an M12x1.25mm thread on their studs while Honda uses M12x1.5. While surfing the interwebs we found these titanium wheel nuts from Acer Racing that come in the correct M12x1.5 pitch. This means we have a nice light lug nut without the galvanic corrosion issues of aluminum. We also don’t have to worry about galling these or accidentally rounding the heads. They are also a standard tapered seat which fits with both our stock Suzuki wheels and our bigger Watanabe RS-8 wheels. These nuts are actually meant for the E36 3-Series. That’s right we have Honda studs and BMW wheel nuts on our Suzuki. Ain’t the internet great?!It is really, really important to make sure you know the seat type when picking lug nuts. Otherwise this can happen to you. Longtime MotoIQ readers will remember I had a wheel fall off my 240SX when I towed it with our Project Vehicross a few years ago. This happened because the wheels were cut with a tapered seat, but the previous owner had installed lugnuts that had ball seats. This did not provide the correct torque load, putting undue strain on the studs. Eventually they began to fail and the remaining lug nuts came loose along with the wheel.Along with being much stronger than our stock studs, the ARP studs are a hair longer. This will allow us to easily check to see if we have a wheel nut coming loose. We decided to stick with 2” long studs but 3” long studs are also available from ARP.
Replacing the studs is not hard but it is labor intensive. We did this same swap on our 240SX when we converted it to 5-lug hubs so we had all of the supplies needed to do this on the Cappuccino. The first thing we did was install a sacrificial 1.25 pitch nut a few turns onto the old stud.
Then, we hit the stud with a sledge hammer until it popped out. This was the fun part. The nut serves several purposes. First, it prevents damage to the threads: If the end of the stud gets mushroomed it may not clear the brake rotor or hub. Second, the nut keeps the stud from flying out when the knurling comes free. And third, when the nut stops your hammer from hitting and cracking the brake rotor when the stud pops free. We found that removing the rear calipers and rotors made it easier to get the studs in and out. The front had more clearance so we left the brakes in place.
1 comment
Is your next installment going to be about needing to change your wheel bearings from all that hammering?