Hey fellas,

Trying to replace 3 wheel studs on my rear wheel. I cannot get any of the new 3 studs to pull through the flange. I've tried with a breaker bar (with a cheater) and with an impact. They'll pull through about 1/2 way but that is it.

What they heck am I doing wrong here? I'm eating up washers for spacers behind the lug nut and have eatin up the old lug nut too.
WTF?
I released one of the parking brake shoes to get the old ones out and now I've got springs and crap falling all over the place, lol.

first, do the new studs exactly match the old ones?
second, are your washers larger than the shank of the stud?

They "look" the same, but hard to really tell for sure.

The washers were bigger than the stud. They are galvanized washers and seem pretty soft so the nut was digging right into them. So then I tried a closed-end wrench as a spacer, but thats eating up the lug nut. Something isn't right here. My first thought was these studs may be too big, but they do look correct. NAPA studs...

Maybe you can try a normal nut with a flat flange instead of a lug nut, way more surface area to distribute the load. A stronger impact wrench wouldn't hurt either, lol.

EDIT: It's hard to say just from your post, but you need to also keep an eye on everything, and make sure something's not binding...you don't want to end up over stretching the studs in the process of pulling it through. I only suggested a stronger impact wrench because I was under the impression that you're using a weak electric one and that's whats stopping you from finishing the job...obviously if you're using a strong pneumatic one, strength is probably not the issue here

That is a concern. Either stretching one or snapping a new one.
Impact is a Craftsman pneumatic set on the highest setting. No electric stuff here. The only one I could get half way in was with a breaker bar + a cheater pipe on the end.
I may go buy another brand of stud and see what happens. Not wanting to take it to a shop and pay them $100 to tell me I'm dumb. LOL

What is exactly happening when you can't go past the 1/2 way point? Are the washers crushing? Is the tapered lug nut seat squeezing past the washers? etc...? Does the lug nut just stop turning even if you hit it with the impact wrench at max force?

If you are using cheapo soft washers like you said, the tapered seat of the lug nut might just wedge into it and squeeze through and using up all the pulling forces, so to speak.

Perhaps, measure the inner bore of the hub and the outer diameter of splines at the end of the stud to see if it's just way off.

EDIT: Last idea...if all else fails see if you can some how rig a ball joint press into that area and use it to press the stud in? You can rent them for free usually at auto stores. Good luck!

Impact stops making progress.
Breaker bar, I pretty much had all my 200lbs on it and I started to think I was going to snap a stud.
I've got a pitman arm pullers and some various other pullers. I went to autozone and picked up 2 more studs to see if they would be any better, along with some m12 washers. The other washers were sae and a little big for the studs. They did start to wallow out from the lug nut.

I'm moving in 2 days so this has to get done tonight or tomorrow.

This or use a taper nut, for a steel wheel, backwards.

Picked up one of those too. I'll give it a go in the morning when I can see some thing out there.

Without a doubt, you don't want to use the OE shank lug nuts to pull a stud through. You need to get an open acorn lug nut and used the flat side of it. It will give you more flat surface area to pull it through. I would take the napa stud to another part store just to be sure it is the same size. It is easy to get the wrong size.

Got the 3 studs pulled through. Both Autozone studs snapped at about 95% seated. Was able to get the NAPA ones in. Now I'm trying to get the parking brake back together. Managed to lose one of the shoe spring retaining clips so I'm rigging one up for now.