I bought a 2000 2.5 RS used and apparently the previous owners (highly intelligent people) decided to use a wrong lug nut on one of the wheels. They inevitably had to hack off the lug nut. What is the easiest (cheapest) way to fix the problem? I do have hand tools and am not a mechanical moron. Is there any way of avoiding cutting off my left arm and selling it on the black market to afford taking it into a shop, or am i going to have to get used to typing one handed?

Thanks for any help,
George

 

You can purchase a stud puller from your local part store. I think how it works is you screw the puller on the old stud and when you tighten it down it pushes the stud out the back of the hub.

 

There used to be a couple of good threads about this. You might want to try and find them before you read my description

If it is similary to the WRX, you need to remove the wheel, brake caliper and brake disk. You then need to line the offending bolt up with the notch in the back of the hub which allows room for it to slide out. You then use your chosen method of extraction to push the bolt out of the hub. The puller technique is the approved method. There is actually a proper tool for doing this. The alternate method is to spray the bolt with WD-40 and leave it for a couple of hours. You then take a hammer and whack the bolt back through through the hub. The hazards of this technique is that it is violent on the wheel bearing and it could go wrong if the bolt bends. It worked ok for me though.

Getting the new bolt in is fun as well. You need a puller or something to push in the new bolt. I did this by using a spare nut and a bunch of washers on the bolt to pull it in by tightening it up.

I swapped out several of mine which got chewed by frequent auto-x wheel swaps (and the dealer using 100+ lbft of torque fastening the wheels).