I broke a wheel stud on this vehicle, and it appears that the fine engineers at Kia expect you to replace the entire hub assembly. There is a thin sheet metal dust shield behind the studs, preventing them from being driven out. Is there anything bad that would happen if I were to cut a hole in the dust shield to replace the stud?
I don’t have any experience w/Kias, but there was an article in Popular Mechanics a few months ago that covered how to replace a broken wheel stud. It might be good as a tutorial if nothing else. Are you certain replacing an individual stud isn’t possible? It’s sort of surprising to hear. Why do you think this?
Try rotating the hub to see if there’s a position where the lug stud can be driven out from behind.
You might find a positon where the broken stud can be driven out. But the new stud will be longer. And that might be a problem.
Tester
Replacing a stud is easy. Replacing a stud on this vehicle is problematic because there is a dust shield behind the hub preventing me from driving the old stud out. I would like to grind a hole in the dust shield, but I want to be sure I won’t regret it later.
If I were in your position, and the only thing that prevents you from replacing stud? I’d hit that thin back-plate with a step drill bit to gain access to the stud. And not worry about it.
Tester
I used a dremel tool and die grinder to put a hole in the plate and replaced the stud as normal.
“necessity is the mother of invention”