I enjoy Costco. I feel like the money I put into a Costco membership I get back in affordable bulk items, conspicuously cheap hot dogs, and discounted services like the store’s tire shop.
I do not feel the same about my 2016 Subaru Forester, as I already explained in a recent article. The pleasure I derive from Costco collided with the resentment I feel towards my Subaru today when I took my car to Costco to get the tires rotated.
It turns out I’ve found another way for my Forester to disappoint me.
This Should Have Been An Easy Day
In that last article, I noted that the car tends to eat headlight bulbs, lower control arms, wheel bearings, and tires. In fact, since writing that story I had to replace another headlight. This is a car I bought new less than a decade ago and I’ve lost count of the number of headlights I’ve needed.
Given I got decent life and great performance out of my Michelin CrossClimate 2 tires I went ahead and got the same set, but rather than have to deal with Subaru anymore, I got the tires from Costco.
Not only did I get a good price, but if you take care of proper tire maintenance Costco offers a great 5-year road hazard warranty. Subaru only offers a 2-year warranty and, the last time I had to use it, I had to wait a while for new tires because I didn’t go with the OEM tire.
In order to stay in the good graces of the Costco road hazard warranty, the plan this morning was to take it over to my local store, do a call, and grab a hot dog while they did the rotation.
Before I could get the hot dog or even finish the call I got paged to the tire shop. Oh no…
Yet Another Weird Subaru Thing
Three wheels were on the ground, but the front passenger side tire was still meekly hanging there. A litany of potential problems ran through my mind: worn struts wearing out one side? Obvious Subaru alignment problems?
Nope, one of the lug nuts was stuck and the tech nicely explained that removing it was likely to snap it off.
Having never experienced this I was curious, is this a Subaru issue?
“Oh, yeah, it’s always Subarus. We see this all the time,” a tech explained.
Why?
“The thread pitch is too narrow,” said another.
The thread pitch is the space in between the threads and, alas, Subaru does use a 1.25 mm pitch, versus 1.5 mm for Toyota, for instance. I also sense that the quality of steel might be an issue, but I haven’t done a metallurgical comparison so I can’t say for sure.
I contemplated having them just crack it off and fix it later. I’ve driven a McLaren with two missing lug nuts, a Subaru missing one seemed pretty easy and it’s something I can deal with later.
Then I thought about my last article and decided that if anyone was going to break it off it was going to be me, dammit. It’s a $4.00 part, so I wasn’t sweating the damage (actually, it turns it’s a $2.00 part).
The manager of the tire shop saw me taking pictures and I explained what I do for a living and he confided in me a little more. Not only do they crack Subaru studs all the time, people don’t believe them.
These are relatively new cars and customers often get the rotations done at the dealership for the original tires because of service deals, warranty reasons, et cetera.
“I take the wheels off and show them where the dealership service techs have just replaced the studs without telling them,” he tells me.
Classic Subaru.
I thanked them and then drove home to see if, indeed, this would snap if I tried a low-power solution (my arm and the wrench that came with the car).
I put light pressure on the lugnut and it doesn’t budge. I put slightly more arm into it and they snapped like Queen under pressure.
Dammit.
How Common Is This?
Just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind I checked around to see if this was a common complaint. It turns out this is a well-known issue and there are plenty of threads about it on the web.
I went a step further and asked Bozi, because Bozi wrote about how much he loves his Subaru and how little trouble it gave him.
“I actually ended up buying like a pack of studs after I snapped the third one on my WRX doing a rotation,” Bozi told me. “Fortunately, the studs are cheap.”
He even provided a photo:
Other Subaru owners I talked to said this also happened to them.
It’s Not A Big Deal, But It’s Annoying
I keep thinking back to my high-mileage Volvo, which had over 200,000 miles of tire rotations, including the ones I did myself. Did I ever snap a stud? No. Do I ever remember seeing a stud that seemed newer? Nope.
This isn’t a huge deal. It’s an easy fix and either one I’ll do myself or, honestly, I’ll probably toss a few bucks to my mechanic and he’ll do it for me.
It’s just another thing in a long list of things about this car that feels cheaply made or under-engineered. I just wanted to rotate my tires, it shouldn’t result in having to do more work. I’m used to breaking things while fixing them on my project cars, not on the car that’s supposed to be the thoughtless daily driver.
Also, it’s worth noting that for all of his Subaru love, the next new car that Bozi bought was a Toyota.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5rjAZOp-xe/
Just saying!
2012 Legacy owner, swap summer/winter tires myself twice a year plus taking them on/off for maintenance, never snapped a stud. I’ve put on anti-sieze once or twice in the lifetime of the car, and always torque to the correct spec. I put in LED headlights 3 years ago after forgetting I had a blown bulb and had to drive home from a Dead and Co concert with my high beams on the entire way. One wheel bearing at 60k and front lower control arms at 130k.
Despite your last article I bought a Crosstrek for daily driving, my first Subaru. I really didn’t like any other current options for hatchbacks. I can only imagine the punishments coming my way.
We have a 2014 Forester and all the issues you’ve listed I’ve also seen, headlight bulbs, control arms, wheel bearings, wheel studs.
My father-in-law and my sister both have and love Foresters so we’re like, this should be a good thing, nope, never again.
Oh also we don’t even have 80K miles on it yet, all of that in the 1st 75,000 miles, wheel bearings in the 1st 75k miles, my 80s Chevrolet didn’t even have that in the 1st(only) 100k!
At least reading this I no longer feel alone, I feel seen, thank you.
ARP replacements?
AARP discount replacements?
There are plenty of threads on this issue, ha
Oh, boo!
Through 2 Subarus I’ve never snapped one. Now I’m going to be on high alert next time I take the wheels off my wife’s forester.
No this is either the whoever rotated the tires prior either crossthreaded or overtorqued. This isn’t some magical subaru issue. I have seen this all the time with other cars. You just have to use more caution against crossthreading due to the narrower threads since they will be more likely to have the issue. 9 times out of ten a shop will not even thread them on by hand. They just impact them on.
This. Had a conscientious buddy who worked at a tire shop. He rarely snapped studs as he always started them by hand.
Yeah I never expected to see such a poorly informed article on here. Like I am no subaru apologist even though I have owned a few and built a few of their motors. I agree they have issues. This is not one of them. The tire shop was bullshitting him so they wouldn’t have to pay it. They do this EVERY time.
Exactly this.
My Mini has the opposite problem. The original owner put on aftermarket wheels and used 10-point Bimecc lug bolts. The brand-new socket made by Bimecc cracked, fortunately, on the last bolt on the last wheel I was tightening. And, yes, I was using a torque wrench to avoid over tightening.
It seems odd that Subaru’s M12x1.25 wheel bolts would cause an issue, since it’s a finer thread pitch than the other standard M12x1.5, meaning the studs have a larger minor diameter and could theoretically be stronger.
According to this website Fiat, Infiniti, Nissan, Peugeot, Subaru and Suzuki are the only brands that chose fine thread M12x1.25 wheel bolts, every other brand uses a different bolt size.
https://cartreatments.com/lug-nut-sizes-types/
The problem with Metric vs. Inch is that the method of measuring pitch is different. In metric, the second number (the 1.25 in M12x1.25) is the spacing between the thread peaks measured in MM. In inch, the second number (the 20 in 1/4-20) is the number of threads per inch. As the threads get more coarse they become taller from the land to the groove. So, the bigger number in metric means the opposite in inch. Don’t even get me started about the differences in dowel pins between metric and inch.
Yes, a numerically larger pitch on a metric fastener means a coarser thread, while a numerically larger TPI on an imperial fastener means a finer thread.
1/2″-13 is unified coarse thread while 1/2″-20 is unified fine thread
The problem with M12 is that M12x1.75 is coarse thread, M12x1.5 is fine thread and M12x1.25 is extra fine thread
They don’t. This is a pure anecdotal post. “My incident happened so I looked on the forums blah blah.” I have seen SOO many issues where stupid tire shops torque the shit out of the studs or cross thread them. I agree that a larger thread pitch might be easier for techs to get on, but this is not so much a design flaw as a lazy tech flaw.
Yeah I’m so Torqued that I want to Bolt out of here before I Snap
If I owned a Subaru, I would find this whole situation pretty galling.
I’ve heard this a lot, though I can’t say my old ones had that problem—and I beat the hell out of them—and they used the same thread and pitch. I wonder if they cheesed out on the metal with the newer ones or if people are horsing them on too tight. I rarely see people using torque wrenches on wheels. I use a gun, but only to zip them off or cinch them on before torquing them properly. Or maybe they use shitty lug nuts that cause galvanic corrosion? My GR86 has the optional black lug nut upgrade—sort of a markup in that it was a compulsory option—but definitely for the better.
This is the way. Impact to zip them off. Hand-thread them on, then to save time, spin on at minimum torque with the impact only enough to make bring the wheel fully in contact with the hub. Then finish by hand with a proper torque wrench.
Why is this so hard for people to do?
The idea of not starting by hand gives me that terrible gut-drop feeling just thinking about that first, sick, too-hard bite of a cross threaded lug. I get that not everyone has a torque wrench, but every shop should and there’s no reason (speed – ok, no good reason) not to tighten the lugs to spec. Whatever the case, torquing the screaming jesus out of it by air/impact/tire iron gets you nothing but problems.
I’ll admit to being a total nerd about this but for $12, there’s no excuse. 1/2 in. Drive 10-150 ft. lb. Click Torque Wrench (harborfreight.com)
Yeah, yeah, make your Harbor Freight jokes. A Snap-On won’t stay in cal* any longer than a HF one with they way they are (not) cared for by 99% of people. Just buy a new one every year and you’ll still be money ahead…
*I used to work in a calibration lab, I’ve calibrated a torque wrench or two… thousand…
Back when I had that very public (ahem) meltdown about the valve cover, it was a Kobalt that had sold me out. I never regarded them as top of the line, but I never thought they were outright bad. Now I just don’t even know what’s true anymore.
I have a little baby 1/4″ Autocraft one in in-lbs, Big Blue – a 1/2″ Kobalt – that goes from 90 – 250 ft-lbs, and had just picked up that one to fill the middle of the gap. I didn’t look up any ratings so apologies if my numbers are off.
I actually agreed with you on each point you made. I was just trying to take away the one “justification” someone would have for not having a set of torque wrenches. Not starting a bolt by hand is just lazy the same as failing to properly torque a fastener. Doubly so for a shop that is being well paid to do a job right…
I’ll admit to getting a bit defensive when I mention HF ones because while yes, there are better brands, dropping it once or leaving it set above its lowest setting once renders it worse junk than a cheap brand.
No need to bring out the torque wrench for wheels (or carry one in your car), when torque sticks exist. Sure, they’re not going to be as accurate as a perfectly calibrated tq wrench, but a couple ft/lbs tighter won’t make a difference.
I swap tires frequently for track days and never had an issue with tq sticks on any of my cars.
Tire shops do use torque sticks a lot. But they also beat the cr@p out of them until they’re out of spec, and may or may not have enough of the right torque values lying around, and a lot of the “techs” are likely to get tired of hunting them down and just grab the impact gun and a socket and hit it. Or, use the torque sticks and still crank the impact gun up to too high of a torque setting — and the percentage reduction from the torque stick still won’t be enough to prevent over-torquing the lug nuts. Just having them won’t fix stupid.
What’s the proper maintenance for a torque wrench, btw?
It’s mainly a matter of how you treat them. The single biggest no-no is leaving them set at anything above their lowest setting when you’re done. This prematurely ages the spring and creates non-linearity in the setting (typically low at lower settings and high at higher settings). Next is dropping them, this commonly knocks them out of spec across their range. After that; using ta torque wrench as a breaker or to loosen a bolt, this just causes premature wear to the internals.
None of this is taking into account the differences you get in settings due to temperature (yes, it makes a difference) and by not exercising (clicking) the wrench a few times at the set point prior to actually using it. The latter can make a difference of at least the stated accuracy of the wrench.
As far as actual maintenance; most industrial standards recommend calibration every 12 months with 6 month or less recommended for higher accuracy or critical use. Where I worked required calibration every 3 months and I’d say the average lifespan was, at most, 3 years before they went bad. They tend to live a hard live and are actually pretty delicate.
All that applies to the “click” type, the ones where a needle points to a scale tend to last a LOT longer but they are a bit less user friendly.
That’s exactly what I do (I also clean all the mating surfaces and inspect everything while I’m in there, but that’s off the subject) and what I teach non-car people to do if they need to change a tire or something (for cars that even have spares anymore!). Really, I mostly use the gun just to zip them off as I basically thread at least three of them to the point where they seat so I don’t rely on the gun to jam the nuts into their seat and align the wheel. It doesn’t even take a great torque wrench—they’re not head bolts or something delicate—so there’s some margin of error. I think it’s mostly tire shop guys who hammer them on causing problems. I have a $50 HF plug-in electric gun and if I don’t let off the trigger as soon as I hear the first blow, I’ll have to loosen the nut to retorque them, but when I go to any tire shop, I hear pro level air guns going off like an M2 dumping an entire ammo box. I think there’s legitimately something at least marginal about Subaru’s bolts where they’re less tolerant of such abuse, but the real problem there is the prevalence of abuse and it’s tough to know whether there’s something else going on with their bolts or it’s just down to lazy oafs.
And since this website is one that’s generally safe for work and for children, it shall remain that way.
I say Nuts to the Lug in Subaru engineering that was too much of a Stud to admit he Screwed up ordering the Narrow Threads like they were skinny jeans or something. Jerk
“…a Subaru missing one seemed pretty easy and it’s something I can deal with later.”
This is something that worries me whenever I need to do anything with the wheels on my Volvo 66 GL. It has three-lug wheels so there’s not much wiggle room for one to fail.
Perhaps it’s more to the point to say that there will be far too much wiggle room if one does.
I think a part of this problem that is not mentioned here is that most shops, dealers included, way over-torque lug nuts. I guess other brands can handle it, but Subarus cannot.
I rotate tires on my Subaru and Honda at home, and so have a good idea what it feels like to remove a wheel that was properly torqued (89 ft lbs for the Subaru, 80 for the Honda) 6 to 9 months prior. Pretty much any time I get a car back from any shop I’ve gone to, it’s orders of magnitude harder to take off the nuts. Knowing of Subaru’s delicate bolts, I’ve gone out of my way to try to avoid having shops remove the wheels–i.e., when I get new tires, I take the wheels off and take them to the tire shop and then reinstall them myself–but obviously it still has to happen sometimes.
This doesn’t make it not Subaru’s fault–they probably need to anticipate that most technicians are just putting the nuts back on with the handiest air gun. But the blame can’t lie entirely with them. That said, I’ve heard of a fair number of owners switching out all their studs for new ones from ARP, which seems to dodge the problem.
Absolutely. I rotate my tires myself and torque them correctly. I also use a little anti-seize on the studs so that it won’t rust tight and come loose more easily. I helped my brother with his Subaru a few weeks ago. We changed the brake shoes. We had a hell of a time breaking the lug nuts loose. As in- I was standing on the tire iron trying to get it to work loose. The shop he’d sent it to for new tires had torqued the shit out of everything
Adding anti-seize to lug nuts/bolts is one of those things that seems like a good idea, but actually isn’t. It would seem that adding anti-seize to the threads would prevent seizure due to rust/corrosion. Maybe that’s true. The problem is that when you add a lubricant to threads where no lubricant is specified, then you tighten the nut to the specified torque value, you are actually applying more force to the fastener than the designer intended. This is because the lubricant reduces thread friction. If you still apply the same torque to the nut, then you will be stretching the bolt/stud more than was intended in the specification. It may be that the fastener is MORE likely to break with the anti-seize (added lubricant) than without! For more fun with bolted connections, read Huibert’s nifty article on the subject: The Way Bolts Work Is Far More Fastenating Than You Think: Tech-Talk With A Suspension Engineer – The Autopian
Using anti-seize is great provided that you reduce your torque value by about 20%. Note that the yellow zinc chromate plating on the new stud shown acts as a lubricant, so it should not have anti-seize or other lubricants applied.
The use of lubricants during torquing has been proven to provide much more equal clamp load across multiple bolts than just doing it dry.
That’s why head bolt install procedures almost always specify a lubricant for the threads. Even so, I often get on people’s case about using the specified lubricant: if it says engine oil, then use engine oil. Not ARP lube, not moly grease! Fun fact: The Fiat 500 1.4L head bolts are comically small AND they are installed dry. I didn’t believe it at first but I checked multiple sources and they all matched.
Agreed. I’m not sure all shops are careful about this.
I personally put on/take off winter wheels & tires on all our DD cars, but our ‘12 Forester has a 72 ft-lb torque spec, the lowest of any car we’ve owned. I am careful, and I’ll even loosen & re-torque all the wheel nuts any time the wheels come off in a shop (inspection). So far, no trouble in 13+ years here i the corrosion capital Northeast. Fingers crossed now though.
Subies do seem to be cheaply built: we’ve replaced all 4 wheel bearings, as well as sway bar links, at least 3 control arm bushings, and 2 tie rods. Plus, the radio sucks, the seats are pretty uncomfortable and the interior is mostly cheap plastic. But we bought it for its room, roof-boxability, good sight lines, and very decent all wheel drive system.
By the way, our ‘01 Volvo has wheel bolts, not studs & nuts.
Interestingly, the previous owner of my Prius had this problem too. When I bought the car he handed me a pile of lug bolts because he said he kept breaking them. Since I bought the car and have been doing my own tire rotations with proper torquing procedures, I have yet to break a bolt.
Also of note is that the Prius has an unusually low lug nut torque number as well (76 ft/lbs, IIRC). Could be that higher torque lug nuts handle overtorquing better than lower torque ones.
Must not have been an issue for BRZs I swapped my wheels pretty regularly for track/street use. I’ve NEVER had this happen on a car in over 20 years of heavy use.
Does anyone replace them with a non OEM option?
Well, the BRZ is engineered by Toyota so I suspect that it uses Toyota lugs that are the larger pitch and better quality.
The BRZ was/is a joint project between Subaru and Toyota. Off the cuff, I’d say it’s pretty close to a 50/50 split regarding what’s Toyota and what’s Subaru. I just checked the Subaru parts catalog and found that the 2015 BRZ lug nut part number fits various 2008-21 Subaru models, and that part number supersedes to one that fits various 2015-2025 models. The wheel lug (stud) is a similar situation: the part number fits various 2002-2025 Subarus. So, it’s not a Toyota part.
Plenty of 22+ BRZ/GR86 owners are snapping the stock studs and opting for ARP studs as replacements.
The wheel studs are Subaru spec not Toyota (for the reply below the OP)
My 2014 BRZ had (past tense) stock 1.25 pitch studs and after breaking 2 at the end of a rallycross day I swapped them all for ARP. It’s a common swap with the racers I know.
Yikes. I was expecting a variant of Ford’s (and I hear Chrysler too) infamous swelling jacketed lug nut fiasco, but this is even worse/more annoying.
I wonder if Ford dealers likewise just swap those out when they find them and never tell the owner.
(As for me, after a second lug nut swelled, I replaced all of them with unglamorous regular ones)
Did this on my Mustang. Stupid 2 piece nuts. Also the supplied wrench was no match for the impact gun the tech used rotating my tires and bent. So now I have a breaker bar and socket in the trunk. I should probably just toss the original one.
I had to invest in one of those emergency lug nut removal sockets to get the second failed nut off!
So there are plenty of threads on the internet about Suburu studs having cheap skimpy threads? Makes sense. I guess if the shops and dealers just swap them and don’t say anything many Don’t know the issue. I guess new wheels from a different manufacturer would work if they fit. I don’t get why go with different studs than every one else in the industry?
Yep, same thing happened to me with my STi. At Costco the first time too. Second and third time was rotating tires at home. I kept a handful of spares on hand for quick replacement.
I’ve changed a lot of wheels on SVXs and never had any problems, but I have snapped a stud on my 94 Tacoma taking a lug nut off.
Perhaps this a new Subaru problem.
Can’t really blame Subaru for this. They gave up on nuts and studs when they started marketing to their target demographic.
Damn. That got a chuckle.
Oh, you’re SO goin’ to hell!
😉
Had that exact same thought as my finger hit the “post comment” button. Do I want to tag this with a quick “I’m not a bad guy comment?” Because I’m not. Subaru was the one that started adapting its ads before smart asses like me got involved… Plus my daughter might kill me so there’s that. All I’m say is, I’ll give some to your charity for this one, Subaru.
Did I just hear a Mic drop? ️(◔ヘ◔)
Is this why the wheels fell of the new Toyobaru EV SUV when it first hit the market?
No, that was because the bore hole spacing was drilled slightly off
Fun fact: The BZ4X/Solterra wheels are attached with wheel bolts, rather than with studs and nuts. The updated wheel bolts use a captive washer with a spherical seat (sorta like Porsche), rather than the original bolt’s design which had a built-in spherical surface on the bolt itself. Also, the torque spec for the bolt was slightly increased. Something changed on the wheels, too.
So THATS where Saubers F1 team gets its wheel nuts from…
What the shit. How do they even fuck up stuff like this at this point? I’m frustrated for you. Man.
So here is an potentially naive question:
Why not replace all 20 studs and nuts with aftermarket ones made from higher grade steel and/or of a coarser pitch? If this is a well known problem, the demand is presumably there, and it’s not as if wheel studs are a new fangled technology….
My assumption is that since they are press fit, a higher grade of steel that is stronger will also be more likely to damage the OEM hub given they are press fit, or similarly would not actually stay pressed into the hub, as they are designed to deform a certain amount on install, and the grooves grip into the hub to keep it from rotating.
I’m sure a properly engineered aftermarket hub and stud combo, or even just studs with a standard 1.5mm thread pitch would fix the problem, but then you get into the territory of doing nearly imperceptible modifications to normie vehicles, whose owners can’t remember when they changed the oil last, that you’re asking for a very bad time.
Based on a perusing of the forums this isn’t an unknown or that uncommon upgrade. Given that I’m selling the car in a year or two it’s not worth it, but if I planned to keep the car longer I’d definitely consider it.
I would imagine you can get better studs for a Subaru, since a lot of people track and off-road them and need to change tires frequently. I know the 2nd time I snapped one while trying to swap a wheel out in the woods I’d be looking for a stronger replacement.