DeViLbOi

iTrader: (1)

Tap&Die party at Brian's tomorrow? :P

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

HA... I work all day tomorrow!

DeViLbOi

iTrader: (1)

Me too...wrenchin with Brian is fun.

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

You actually going to be wrenching John

DeViLbOi

iTrader: (1)

Waiting to hear back from Brian...but maybe.

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

Impressed... anything dirty

DeViLbOi

iTrader: (1)

Depends... :P I think I need a 10mm socket and a Philips screwdriver. :P

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

That goes with just about anything on the 8
Why you being so secretive?

DeViLbOi

iTrader: (1)

Who's being secretive?

Gopherage

Changed my wheels today and totally blew it. I over torqued a nut and snapped one of the bolts on a test drive. I guess i'm asking now what my choices are? Should I take it to a wheel and tire place? Steve should I get a bolt from you from the donor? It really sucks I always figured since I only weight 125 pounds I'd never be able to snap a bolt.

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

Josh- You'll need a heavy hammer to pound the stud out.
Give it a few blows (doesn't have to be crazy hard swings) and it should come out.
Be careful not to hit the wheel hub or the other studs.

When installing the new stud, its best to give the stud a few taps on the stud head so its closer/tighter against the wheel hub.
To get the stud secured against the wheel hub without installing the wheel, you can use a few large washers and thread on the lug nut.
Then start tightening the lug nut to pull the stud head against the wheel hub.

Stig

"It's not what cha' have but how ya use it!" Jon's right and drop $25 on a torque wrench at Sears.

BTW any one watch the F1 race today it was nuts...

Gopherage

Thanks Jon your a wealth of knowledge as always. I guess i'll try to figure out where to order a new stud from. (stud i guess is a better term than bolt) Steve would you be willing to sell me one from the donor or are they all sold or spoken for?

Ya Stig i'm definitely going to go invest in one, my dad was making fun of me for relying on my own body weight as a measurement. He point out that if i use my legs or arms at all that the weight i'm putting on it is just going to increase beyond just my body weight.

I feel stupid but i guess I have to learn somewhere and i'm glad i thought to check all the lugs when i got back from my drive.

Stig

At least you OVER TIGHTENED them and didn't leave them on finger tight and have a wheel go flying off and end up in a ditch. I have busted off a stud or two over the years - it's part of your 'car guy' evolution

We have all done that or something similar at some point in the past! Like the first time I did my own brakes years ago on my MGB GT. All I will say is there was a few fast turns to avoid hitting a semi truck and a frantic downshifting deceleration until I could use the hand brake to stop in a parking lot in suburban Chicago.

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

Don't feel stupid... we all make stupid mistakes.
Examples for me this year:
1) Disassembled my passenger-side door to troubleshoot why my window wasn't going down. After the motor and switch was removed, realized it was just the window lock on the driver's side.
2) Thought my pilot bearing or seal was bad and was about to drop the transmission. Bought tools for removing and installing the seal and bearing. Find out it was just my clutch pedal alignment and adjustment that was causing my problems.
3) Snapped a bolt in my lower intake manifold which I'll need to tap out.
4) Started filling my car with coolant and wondered why I was using more fluid than usual... cursed as I jumped under the car to insert the radiator's drain plug!

So see... we all make mistakes!
Just learn from it and move on!

Also, don't go by your body weight when tightening something.
The torque applied by a bar multiplies as the bar length increases.
This is why an 18" breaker bar works better than a 8" socket wrench when removing hard bolts.

docgatorx8er

iTrader: (10)

Josh, I didn't see if this was a front or rear stud. The rears are very difficult to get out, you can't just pound them out. The whole bearing assembly has to come out. There's a thread on removing them.

Gopherage

Thanks guys for making me feel a bit better about the whole situation. Plus your stories made me chuckle. I suppose someday i'll be telling someone my story although I think the radiator plug and the brakes story were funnier than mine, even though they probably weren't at the time.

Mark thanks for chiming in, luckily it is a front one so i'm guessing the pound it out method will work fine then?

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

Josh- Here is a DIY I found for you on removing the front wheel studs:
https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...ght=wheel+stud

Gopherage

Thanks Jon i actually had just found and read that thread. Was just about to come ask about what Team Rx8 said about damaging bearings by pounding it with a hammer? Is that just him throwing in his .02 cents about everything or is it a legitimate point? The creator of the thread said Mazda techs just banged his out originally and he just copied their technique. I just don't want to make the problem any bigger than it already is.

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

Hammering it is a very common method used on many vehicles.
You'll learn that there are some people on this forum who go around trying to flex their little internet muscles.
Is he completely full of ****... no.
But a lot of times you can give it a couple decent taps for it to start coming out.
If the stud was really fused onto the hub... yeah, you don't want to pound the hell out of the stud.
At that point its not a bad idea to use a press to get the stud out (which would require removing the hub assembly).

I also just went to Google's video section and searched "replace wheel stud" and many videos came up showing you how to do it.
So check that out too.

Vyndictive

iTrader: (28)

Josh,
Sucks about the stud breaking. I should be able to get one off the donor if you'd like. Shouldn't be too hard. But I also don't know what your time frame is, it'll be faster buy something up by you.

I have an extra torque wrench if you'd like to borrow it for awhile.

Vyndictive

iTrader: (28)

For the many IT people we have on here. . .

I broke my computer last week... more specifically, lost the hard drive.

Computer fails to recognize I have a hard drive at all. It spins up, but doesn't do anything beyond that... So, needless to say, its gone bad.

I got fixed up with a new laptop already, but the problem is I kept many of the real sensitive personnel files off the server and on the hard drive, so I'd really like to rescue those.

Anyone have any thoughts or insights into this how I could do something myself, or where to send this thing out for recovery?

I don't have the details of the drive in front of me, but I think it was a 60 gig hitachi, or whatever hard drives dell normally uses.

Machiavelli

Steve,

I'm not one of the IT gurus, but I recalled seeing this topic covered in a CNET forum weekly newsletter so I dug out the link:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_10...rum-w;forums06

Some good suggestions there. Good luck.

Semi-unrelated rant: I hate Dells . . . if there's any cheap-*** OEM crap from a guy making parts in his basement in Taiwan, Dell seemingly will buy them and stuff them in their machines. A few years ago I had a case fan in a 2 yr old computer go bad. Simple fix, right? Nah. Goofy generic fan with a weird proprietary connector, and Dell neither stocked replacements nor was able to point me in the right direction. I had to solder the wires and connector from the old fan onto a new one. Not the biggest deal on earth, but bloody aggravating when it should have been a 90 second fix.

Update re the Pontiac with the blown airbags - the insurance co. is sending someone out to look at it and it seems the windshield might at least be covered. After that, Pontiac is going to "assess" the situation.

Vyndictive

iTrader: (28)

Thanks Tom... one thing I do have a bit of is time. Only some real sensitive material was kept on the hard drive and off the server... so I can do 75% of everything I need to without having that hard drive back...

Jon316G

iTrader: (1)

Steve- Let me look at the drive and I'll try to recover the files for you.
I'm home today if you want to drop it off.
You can call me if you want to discuss this more.