Longer wheel studs

[Bigdog]

Hi everyone, just thought I would do a fresh post , as most of you know I have gone for wolf wheels with Goodyear G90 tyres, I tried one on this morning and was wondering do you think I would need longer threads or nuts, many thanks

[Bradley66]

Put simply , yes.

[Bigdog]

Would it be something like this I would need, or does anyone know what size I would need, thanks

[Alan Drover]

When the military started using Wolf wheels they used the existing studs with no problems as I have.

[Bigdog]

Do you think they should be ok Alan, I personally feel they get enough grip

[Alan Drover]

I've had Wolf wheels and standard studs for a long time now and no problems. Provided the wheel nuts are correctly torqued and no yoof in a tyre bay has used an air powered tightener then there's nothing to worry about. If the military were happy then that's more than enough for me.

[Bigdog]

👍

[diffwhine]

You need to be a bit careful here as I went down this particular rabbit hole with the MOD.
FRC6137 is the early stud and is usually about 39mm in length. That is applicable up to 1993 Model Year Defenders. After that, they went to FRC5926 which should be 45mm long and superseded to RUF500010. The longer studs came in with Wolf Defender I think, but on a Wolf XD hub, when the nut is fully on, it only shows about one thread in the nut. If you fit a Wolf XD wheel (a 130 rim as well), up against the earlier stud, I suspect that an MOT inspector might query it as there is a 6mm difference which is quite apparent.
The safest solution would be to fit the longer studs, but measure what you have on there first. I seem to recall that the length is determined by the length of stud protruding from the face of the hub.

Looking at your photos, it looks like you have early hubs fitted with 9/16"BSF studs with single taper nuts. Alan Drover will have M16 studs comparable with my part numbers above, so not quite the same. Were it my vehicle and I had any intention of using it in anger, I would replace the studs with the later 576325 (Series 3 and late 2A spec) and fit M16 wheel nuts.

The issue is how far the studs countersink into the hub. You may need to machine the hubs to take either 576325 or even better - RUF500010.

An alternative solution could be to change the hubs. It just so happens that I have several late 2A / Series 3 hubs up to 1980 under p/n 576844 (NOS) which we could do a deal on. If your bearings are good, then they could easily be transferred into these hubs and then its just new hub oil seals.

[Bigdog]

I was hoping not really to go down that line

[Bradley66]

Ok , I'll elaborate. 1.5 D is minimum thread engagement or in this case a minimum on 1.5 threads protruding from the nut. If one of the young grads in my design team showed me this I'd kick his xxxx ! The early nuts achieved the correct thread engagement, the shorter nuts need the thread to protrude.

[Bigdog]

These studs on an old military vehicle seem to be the same length as my ones

[Bradley66]

These studs on an old military vehicle seem to be the same length as my ones

That doesn't make it correct.
 Remember the you lose the first 1 or 2 threads because of the lead in on the stud + you are possibly 3 or 4 threads short on full engagement of the nut.
Not my wheels , not my landrover so it won't be my accident. Some things are not worth risking .

[Beamont58]

Not being a spring chicken, and having worked in automotive engineering most of my life, I have to say that Bradley66 is absolutely correct.

[diffwhine]

It is true that some Defenders have slightly recessed wheel studs when fitted with standard M16 Nuts. Not an engineering ideal, but the way it worked out. LR engineering deemed it ok provided the nuts were torqued up properly.

My concern is if the OP is fitting these rims with the smaller imperial sized studs and relying on a similar torque settings on heavier bigger wheels then this is a potential recipe for stud failure. Hence saying that were it my vehicle, I'd update to M16 studs as a bare minimum.

[LR_Optional_Equip]

As long as they're on M16 studs they will be fine. The MOD put out a memo stating a revised torque of 125lbft when fitting wolf wheels to standard length studs.