I have a broken wheel stud on the passenger front side of my
2003 outback wagon.  I have been reading
various posts here about replacing it and there are a number of approaches described.  Can it be done without removing the hub?   Do you have to remove the tone wheel on the
front?  If how is this done?  I plan to use a hammer to drive out the stud,
I know some object to this, and use a lug nut to draw a new one in. 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

That car doesn't have the tone wheel on the back of the hub so you won't have to worry about that.

The clearance between the stud and the housing of the knuckle can be an issue though. The only way to really know how much room you have is to take the brake rotor off and look. Find the most open area and see if you can get enough room to knock the stud out.

 

I've never had any trouble knocking these small studs out with a hammer. And they can be driven back in with a hammer and punch.

 

I managed to do the job yesterday.  It went well; the old stud came out with just
a bit of encouragement from a 3 pound hammer and there was room for the new one
to come through from the back.  I drew
the new stud in using a lug nut and a stack of ½ inch washers.  Only problem was with the rotor, which usually
comes right off, was stuck and I didn’t have any 8mm bolts on hand so that
meant a trip to the hardware store.  Even
with that it was about an hour from jack up to jack down.  Thanks for the advice.

 

a few years ago, i mysteriously snapped three studs on the front passenger side of my '01 OBW and had to get a tow home. figured replacing studs was an easy job and getting them out was simple enough. back in? not so much. i tried attaching the lug nuts and spacers (almost stripped the new studs wailing on them) and a lot of hammering with no luck. finally had it towed to a shop to get it done. incredibly frustrating considering how inexpensive studs are and how accessible the repair is. thinking about it in hindsight, doing the job outside in the dead of New England winter might have done me in. shrinkage? who knows.

If they don't walk in without having to really wail on the lug wrench, something's not right.

i've done them on 80's, to 90's, and 2000's Subarus - they're all the same and pull through easy enough, yours sounds odd.

 

temps, rust, whatever sheared the lug studs damaged the holes, bad stud threads, nut threads may have been compromised and not synching well with lug nuts - chasing both with a tap-die set often makes jobs go smoother....??

 

i had 3 studs on wheel shear on me at 2am in chartlotte NC years ago. 

the brake caliper bracket bolts are the same thread pitch as lug studs.

i knocked out the sheared off studs, installed two brake caliper bracket bolts (one from each side) and used two nuts (one from each rear wheel) to snug it down.

so i had 4 total on that one front wheel - that's plenty.

the brake caliper bracket bolts are really short so you have to hold them in place while tightening the lug nut down. 

finished the 240 mile drive to atlanta and bought new studs the next morning.