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!
Props to Subaru for just existing as a smaller Japanese automaker (Mazda too), but they didn’t have to go and reinvent the lug nut.
I ran a tire shop for 10 years, and while this is most definitely caused by the work of a previous shop, this was a common thing we saw. Interstingly, There is not much difference in the stud between a Subaru, most Nissans, and many 90s domestic cars.
I think maybe subaru studs just uses a softer metal that is more prone to warping and breakage. IIRC most subarus only called for 85-90 lb ft.
The vast majority of cars call for 110 or better, so a lot of techs will either use the 2nd setting on thier impact or just instinctively grab the 110 torque stick, and i think over the course of time, the studs just give up the ghost.
We have a local subie dealer that does a great job of training thier techs on this, and between them and my tire shop, if a subaru got serviced mostly by us or them, we would never see issues.
Almost Every single time we had one or two snap off, it was on a car wearing Sears or Walmart-special tires.
most Japanese cars only use 75-80 lb ft
Even 110 wouldn’t cause any problems. The problem is that most shops use like 600 lb ft and often uneven.
Even lower. The 1996 and 2003 Subaru manuals say the wheel nut spec is 58 to 72 ft-lb. The 2005 manual says 81 ft-lb. Don’t know about 2014.
This reminds me of the “special” relationship I had with the lug nuts on my 2014 Fusion. See Ford, in all its infinite wisdom, decided to use a jacketed 2-piece lug nut that would easily warp and become rounded off after a few tire rotations. I ended up buying 20 replacement 1-piece lug nuts (Dorman made something good for once) and slowly replacing the damned OEM ones one at a time as they became ruined.
Ford and Mopar have been having this issue on a number of models.
I’m not sure what’s more frustrating: swollen 2-piece nuts, or nuts (or lug-studs) with decorative caps that are fiddly and annoying to get off (looking at you, VAG & gm, though you’re not entirely alone, just the worst offenders).
I don’t miss vehicles having hub caps and higher-quality if ugly fasteners. Probably more aerodynamic, too.
Of all the things to have issues with, swollen or otherwise problematic lug nuts should be at the bottom of the list. There is no cutting edge technology to deal with, just basic fasteners to keep the wheels on.
Maybe Subaru can take some advice from Honda. I had a angry tire shop monkey impact wrench one nut on my 2016 Accord for about 10 seconds. So much that I had to buy a 32″ breaker bar and darn near stand on the end to get it loose. I weight somewhere in the neighborhood of 220 lbs and I was just about hand standing on the bar. I’m sure the stud and nut will never be the same, but neither looked any worse from the madman’s liberal exhibition of pneumatic nut twisting.
I’d have taken it back to the shop and had them make it right, including replacing the stud and nut with one that hadn’t been over(torqued.
Probably should have, but they seemed to be really annoyed to do the checks in the first place. I had an issue with some tires I got from Tire Rack and they were a contracted local shop. There was no money out of my pocket. I figured they’d be double annoyed and likely pissed if they were asked to replace the stud. I didn’t want anything else messed up.
That’s fair. I keep forgetting and taking my shop for granted. Car repair is seemingly getting to be as bad as trying to find a decent lawyer and doctor.
Dealerships don’t often use torque wrenches during tire rotations just like Jiffy Lube, Discount Tire, etc. Even if they do they hammer it home with an impact and then get the torque wrench out for show. I know this because I have worked in the garages around the mechanics at several dealerships. If you want quality work done you really have to take your car to a good mechanic, if you don’t know one go on Facebook and ask in your locals group.
I had a CV axle replaced under warranty on my civic, a few months later it was time for a tire rotation. Typically I use my mid-torque impact to remove the lug nuts as I torque them by hand to spec with a quality torque wrench. On the wheel with the replaced CV axle I had to get out the high-torque impact paired with the high-output battery and still the impact-wrench hammered on a stud 5 seconds before removing it. For those not in the know that combo impact and battery will either break a bolt loose or break it off. It’s a miracle those studs survived!
If the material is the same, a finer thread equals a stronger bolt in tension.
Very simplified:
The tensile load goes through the midway point of the peak shape in the threads in both the bolt and nut. The more threads per in a given distance (the thickness of the nut), the more peaks there is, meaning more material.
For example:
you have a thread that has a 1mm thickness at the midpoint of the thread profile (pitch dis).
Your nut thickness engages 10 threads You have 10mm of material at the pitch dia.
Now, make the thread twice as fine. Now you have twenty threads engaged for the same nut, leading to 20mm of material at the pitch dia.
This example is grossly simplified as I don’t have any thread charts to do a real life calculations. In reality, the relationship is not quite 1 for 1, but there is a significant difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCkZ-BO7w-M
{ kicks back and relaxes in Mitsubishi Owner }
Nissan uses the same smaller studs as Subaru, but they don’t have the same problems.
The best part of the Forester is that huge sunroof 😀
I do like the open feel of the forester’s cabin. It’s one of the few highlights of their lineup.
Still wouldn’t own one.
In the 22+ BRZ/GR86 forums I frequent snapping the studs is fairly common for those changing tires often. Most go for ARP studs as a upgrade. Some even switch them over to 1.5 pitch at the same time.
I may just order a set of ARP studs to have on hand just in case I need them down the road.
It’s these kind of cut corners that eventually turned me off of Subaru. They used to feel tough as nails, now I just don’t trust them to go the long haul.
I don’t think it is a corner cutting thing.. it is a design decision to select such a fine thread pitch, Subaru have been doing this for a long while.
you may not have snapped a stud in your Volvo but you probably suffered from swollen nuts
Lol @ a bunch of people in this thread yammering on about torque specs for lug nuts. Are you kidding me? I expect to receive such haughty comments from the Germans, but this is a bog standard family hauler. Ask an owner of any other Japanese car brand if this has ever been a problem no matter what you do. The answer is no. It’s just like wheel bearings and head gaskets and everything else Subaru can’t seem to get right.
Yeah, these garbage wheel studs are an extremely well known problem with modern Subarus. Like EXTREMELY extremely. I mean it’s up there with Ford 5.4 triton spark plugs when it comes to extremely well known problems. The folks going on and on about torque this and torque that are simply wrong in this case.
I wasn’t sure what other example you were going to pick, but the 5.4 spark plug issue is a good one.
When did the bad stud thing start? I’m surprised I haven’t run across it because I’ve had to deal with every other silly service issue on these stupid cars.
Maybe I’ve just avoided it by changing wheel bearings. I’ve blocked my last bearing job from my mind, but I believe the replacement hubs came with studs installed.
I once crashed my Subaru leaving a car meet.
Upon later inspection, I found that one lug nut was torqued 3.5 lb/in less than spec. That was definitely the reason for the accident.
At this point, I’ve done about 30 tire rotations on my Subarus. I am not a Subaru defender, but this is a problem of the last tire shop. They tightened the nuts with an impact gun instead of using a torque wrench.
Meh. I’ve tightened the lug nuts on dozens of cars hundreds of times with an impact. My Crosstrek was the only car that needed a stud replaced because of it.
You probably weren’t using the gun as if you had a hangover and hated your job.
That’s how I do literally everything.
They used a torque wrench!
Did you see them put them on and tighten them with the torque wrench, or did they just check them after they zoomed them on at 200 ft/lbs with an impact?
Costco requires the use of a torque wrench every time. In 12 years of costco membership and their tires and tire rotations on 4 cars and trucks (in NJ, PA, SoCal and NorCal) I have never once seen a Costco tire shop employee use an impact gun to tighten a customer’s lug nuts, mine or anyone else’s.
That doesn’t mean it’s never happened, of course, but if it was something they allowed I feel like I would have seen it by now.
I wasn’t saying they did this today. I was talking about the last tech to tighten that lug nut – I thought it had been at the dealership.
These tires were done at Costco so the last three rounds of tightening were all done with a torque wrench and done very carefully (I watched them do it). Before that, yeah, dealership.
Well, there goes my theory.
I’m happy to go back to blaming Subaru. I have to change 2 valve cover gaskets on a 4 cylinder engine this weekend because of their obsession with H4s in SUVs.
I had one stud snap in my ’06 Prius, but only one.
I did have a ’64 VW bug that I got cheap, and when I attempted to remove the wheels to replace the garnet infused tires, one wheel bolt would not budge. It was in a carport, so I could hold onto the channel supporting the roof. Even with a four foot 1/4″ wall thickness cheater pipe AND jumping on it, I could not remove that bolt. I sold it like that.
Well, there’s no whoop Dee Doo in your Subaru (evidently)
Here’s a story about Deez Nuts! When the GM midsize cars came out in 1978, AKA G body, I managed a Goodyear Tire store. Wasn’t too long after the G bodies came out, we started seeing the “tin chrome caps “ coming off the lugs of these cars. The lug nut that was left was undersized and you might not have a socket to fit. Of course now the lug wrench that came with the car would not fit! Got to sell lots of folks a new set of lug nuts, real chrome plated lug nuts. Another cost cutting measure by GM?
Always use anti-seize…on my spark plugs too!
My niece bought a NEW Subaru Crosstrek. After 80 miles from the the CVT transmission failed! Dealer replaced it of course, paid for the tow, and threw in an extended warranty.
“Just in Case”.
In probably the only case of Dorman actually making something better than OEM, they make a one piece lugnut to replace the two piece factory lugnuts. End of issue on my pickup.
Dorman did good for me when I ran an independent shop in Santa Cruz, Ca. Even had Catalytic Convertors for some cars. Camry 4 cylinders.
Chrome jacketed lug nuts are used/have been used by Mopar, GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and many others. I’ve seen jacketed lug bolts on german cars too. It’s not just a GM thing.
I hate those jacketed lug nuts so very, very much.
I replaced all of my Focus’ with boring old regular nuts after having to use one of those anti-lug-nut sockets to get a jacketed one off.
Those jacketed nuts are along the lines of cylinder-deactivation engines back in the ’80s – a cool idea that the current tech just can’t back up.
Just seemed like 1978 and on were good years for bad nuts! Lol ????
G bodies usually needed shocks, rear springs and idler arms.
With a new set of tires, gas shocks, and alignment my customers couldn’t believe how much better their car drove. Where’s my time machine?
I think the issue isn’t that the Subaru wheel stud thread pitch is 1.25 mm, but that they specified 12 mm studs in that thread pitch. It could of course also be an issue with whatever steel grade they specified…
Anecdotally, I’ve been told by Old Timers that Ford didn’t switch to metric wheel studs (even though they were ahead of all the other domestic OEM’s in switching to metric fasteners otherwise) because the 1/2″-20 UNF wheel stud lived in a ‘goldilocks zone’ of being just right in terms of strength and clamping force that its nearest metric equivalents (M12 or M14 1.25 or 1.50) couldn’t match. The F150 switched to M14 studs after 1995, and my 2013 mustang is *still* 1/2-20.
If you go M12x1.25 the thread pitch is fine enough that you can get enough clamping load / stretch with human-achievable 100+ ft-lbs of tightening torque that you can yield the stud. Throw in the typical wild-eyed airgun jockeys that are employed in a lot of tire shops and you’re sure to turn those studs into taffy eventually. If they stepped up to 1.5 mm pitch the over-tightening risk is lowered, but then you run the opposite risk of having the wheels put on with below-spec clamping force. If you step up to M14 studs, that will hit the OEM in the wallet, and we can’t have that…
Agree 100% – there is nothing wrong with a fine vs coarse thread except that it’s easier to overtorque a fine thread because of the mechanical advantage.
This just in: If the lug nuts are not tightened to specified torque, guess what happens? They snap just like yours did. Just like the one on the left front of my 2015 silver Forester. That’s because the tire tech at Goodyear used an air wrench and overtightened the nut. To Cro-Magnons level of stupidity. I am not saying that the thread pitch isn’t a factor. What I am saying is very often the lug nuts are torqued improperly and massively overtightened.
Oh yeah, totally, but given that almost every manufacturer seems to be able to deal with it I think Subaru has some specific issue.
I’d love to see data behind the bold claim that “almost every manufacturer” is immune here.
I’ve heard similar horror stories from other Subaru owners, seems like a case of they just don’t build em like they used to. Which is a shame, because the money saved on cheaper parts probably doesn’t equal the money lost on customers never buying your brand again.
I can relate. GM published the torque spec for the steel wheels for my car, not the forged aluminum ones on mine. Before I knew better, I’d managed to snap half the studs from over-torquing them on the seventh or eighth tire rotation. No issues years later torquing them to the proper value. 80 ft/lbs. Toyota recommends 76.
My own anecdotal evidence of having a Nissan with aforementioned 1.25 thread pitch and rotating wheels myself, and multiple shops working on it, I’ve never had an issue.
I’m notorious for both setting my torque wrench to 100ftlb (mostly because it’s what my dad always told me to use), and putting anti-seize on just about every thread so I don’t need to fight it later.
This sounds like an old man yelling at the sky, because his local shop doesn’t take the time to hand-start, nor properly uses a torque wrench.
They were tightened using a torque wrench.
FWIW I anti-seize every stud when I change wheels. I’ve never had a stud fail, but I’m also super pedantic about torque patterns, proper torque setting, and not letting a lot of yokels at tire stores mess with my stuff. I’ll take the wheels off at home and take them in for new tires just because of the horror stories I’ve heard and the things I’ve witnessed. I hate people touching my stuff.
You know that is not recommended, right? It messes with your torque values. I used to do it and I ended up over-torquing my lugs and ruining my wheels. Soft factory aluminum rims. Recommended practice is completely clean, dry studs and screws for accurate torque. I do put anti-seize on the contact points between the wheel and hub/disc. This prevents much swearing when it comes time to remove wheels after a salty winter.
I’ve heard of this, but then I’ve also been doing it for 30 years on hundreds of cars and never had a single problem or failure, even on the aluminum lug nuts on my Porsches. Michigan winters will basically weld lugs to studs and as I said, never had a problem and learned it from old-timers who also never saw a failure. Not sure who’s right here, but until I see an actual problem or know of a problem, I’m going to keep it up.
I thought I was the only one who did this. I absolutely just drop a set of wheels and tires at the shop on my way into work and pick them up on my way home.
It can be a hassle if you don’t have a spare set of wheels / tires or a spare vehicle. Still less of a hassle than a perma-stuck lug nut when trying to change a flat tire.
Easy as this, unlike other cars you must be exact on the torque or they will break.
88ftlbs with a torque wrench. No standing on the breaker bar or stomping on it like some do.
Turn to 88, click, stop and do the rest. When all are on, go back around and gently make each one click again.
Now you are done.
According to MH they’ve been using a torque wrench each time.
Hey Matt, Remember those all metallurgical testing scandals in Japan from about the time your car was built?
And the rear springs? Have yours broken yet? The ones on my mom’s Forester seemed like they were made out of pot metal the way they fell apart.
Are these things connected? I have no direct evidence, but it sure would make sense if they were.
My daughter’s Forester had the springs break and get replaced under warranty. I went to move her car in the driveway — Just opened the door and sat down in the driver’s seat — and heard this strange “clank” from the back of the car. Went back and there was a piece of the left rear spring laying on the pavement. One of the stranger automotive faults I’ve seen.
So far, at least, it hasn’t had an appetite for headlight bulbs or wheel studs. But I tend to be judicious with the impact on removal, and only tighten by hand with a torque wrench.
IIiinteresting.
This is 100% technician/user error. The 1.25 thread pitch does nothing on it’s own to cause galling or damage BUT is more susceptible to an idiot putting the lug nut in the socket on his impact and spinning it on without starting it by hand. Do that and guaranteed you will eventually damage some.
Also, the damage it not caused during removal, it is caused during installation, either by debris or metal shavings getting stuck in the threads or damaging the threads. It becomes apparent during removal.
Knowing those kinds of shops: it’s highly likely their impact gun is set to maximum torque when they install the nuts.
Back in the day when Sears Auto Centers were still a thing, I used to buy tires from them due to a great prorated tread life warranty. They always over-tightened lug nuts, to the point that they stretched the studs.
Even using click type torque wrenches, when I do gage R&R studies, most people over-torque as they go past the click point, whether intentionally or not.
My dad used to attempt to remove the nuts before he left any service shop with the factory kit. If he couldn’t reasonably do it, he had the shop remove and properly re-torque by hand.
He’d be stopped more than once to swap out to his spare and be unable to remove the wheel.
100% is a bit strong. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if subaru is using as low-quality of metals as they can get away with. Especially with Hardigree’s repeated assertions that the last several visits the shop has installed the nuts by hand with a torque wrench, and it being a widespread issue with the brand across the industry, internationally.
So maybe 10% techs, 90% material quality?
If it was a material issue, the stud would have stretched. The thread failure shown with a couple of threads removed is due to metal filings or contamination seizing the nut on the thread and then damage during forced removal.
Also, no auto manufacturer makes their own wheel studs, so these are likely supplied by the same supplier that does other Japanese brands’ wheel studs.