After gaffer taping up the wheel I punched both the stud and the remaining wheel lock. That was my first mistake, being seduced by the thought of splitting the lock rather than drilling the stud. Why? It looked easier and I was warned that drilling that length of stud without a horizontal drill press would be impossible to keep the bit centered. “You don’t want to drill through your wheel” he said.
That bit of advice, as you will see, I could have done without.
Then I try a chisel, bad to worse…
Finally I realize drilling the stud IS the better way.
But it takes a lot of drilling with progressively larger bits to get there. You’ll notice the gaffers tape is gone and my wheel is now naked. Cutting oil dissolves gaffer tape glue.
So now I crush the remaining stud shell, re-center and continue drilling.
I see a little light deep inside the edge of the drilled hole so I put the remaining four lug nuts back on and lower the lift to finish the job.
Snap crackle pop.
But wait, the wheel lock is STILL stuck in the wheel! And yes, my beautiful PVD finish is scratched to hell but fortunately not quite as bad as this "pre-cleanup" image makes it out to be.
Though I suppose I could have done it without a lift, having it made a crap job a little less crappy. Nussbaum double scissor lift. 7,000 lbs. capacity, 4” drive over height, 7 foot lift height and very space and concrete floor friendly. If you have the ceiling height, I highly recommend.
Galling? Not sure but I’d guess if there was I’d see metal transfer between the cone and the dish. I don’t see it.
Bad hole:
Not bad hole:
Wheel lock:
I don’t see galling as the cause, but I do see the stupidity of thinking I could split that thing.
So what’s the cause? There seems to be a difference in seat angle, OEM versus Gorilla:
Could this combined with excessive install torque due to the oiled threads, drive the locking lug too deep into the wheel? That’s my guess as to what happened and therefore I am going Gorilla-less just to play it safe.
Other lessons –
You can’t install a new stud into the wheel hub without taking apart the parking brakes. Once you remove the shoes, springs, etc., you have to remove the 4 small bolts holding the backing plate, then spin it enough to line up a slot where the parking brake cable enters, with the hole. Once I got the stud in, I tried seating it with a C-Clamp to no avail. Ended up using an old 14M 1.5 castle nut with a small spacer to pull the stud in to seat it.
Getting the rotor off can be a challenge too, despite the car being only 2 years old. Once you remove the caliper and the o-ring just in front of the rotor, I found getting a decent sized sledge hammer the best option (versus a rubber hammer, though no harm in trying one first) and then whacking it from underneath where the caliper contacts the rotor. Hitting it lightly only dents the rotor multiple times as you progressively get firmer. One good manly whack does it. Leave two lug nuts on loosely to retain it.
After mixing up some of my special PVD touchup paint, all is back together. Factory lug nuts, no oil on the threads and just a molecule of anti-seize on the cone. I’ll run it 100 miles and check tightness to see if it maintains. Rotated while everything was apart.
This is perhaps the wrong location for this thread given how it’s evolved, but I’ll leave that to the moderators.