I went out for a cruise in the Corvair and when I pulled to a stop light a kid pulled next to me and said my right rear wheel was hell of wobbly.

I must admit, I didn’t perform a safety inspection when I took possession of the Corvair. If I would have done so I would have found that I was missing a lug nut. The hub only has 4 studs to begin with so not having the lug nut installed is 25% loss of securing the wheel down tight. That’s messed up.

As it turned out the reason why the previous owner did not install a lug nut was the stud was completely stripped. This made it worse since the dumb shit could have gotten someone seriously hurt. I vaguely recall the owner mentioning the car needed alignment. I assumed it was standard alignment in the front suspension.

Removing the stripped stud was fairly simple. A good sized weighted hammer and a well placed whacks popped the stud out in no time.

Installing the replacement 7/16-20 stud was a different matter. The documented manual procedure is to use a press to insert the stud until the knurl section has been inserted and the shoulder is flushed to the surface. This is all great if you have a standing press. Not to mention the axle has to be removed from the carrier on the transaxle assembly.

Since I don’t own a press or the fixtures to use for a stud installation I did it the old school way by using a high torque impact wrench and letting the half inch drive snap on air gun with my big 80 gallon compressor do the work. The result came out great.

I still need to confirm that the wobbles are gone by having some following me. At least I know now that all my studs are in place and the wheels are going to fly off.