Caleb also had the luxury of encountering the gut wrenching feeling of stripping a lug nut when rotating the tires himself. It happens every once in awhile, but when the lug nut extractor shredded his lugs. This went from an inconvenience to an extensive repair real fast.

In order to get the wheel off, the wheel studs had to be drilled out. This went without a hitch using a titanium coated bit on a corded drill, and plenty of WD-40 "coolant".

However, replacing the now ruined wheel studs became very interesting. Pressing them out while the hub was on the car wasn't possible, and it was difficult to remove that hub from the knuckle as well.

So removing the entire Focus knuckle assembly was the easiest way to press out the studs with a benchtop vise. Then another wrench was thrown into the process.

When going to purchase new wheel studs at the parts store, we discovered that the old studs are a very different geometry from the stock replacements. This was due to the car recieving a replacement knuckle from the junkyard many years earlier, and this was the only knuckle that was replaced.

This led to a wild goose chase of going to stores in the area to try and purchase parts based on dimensions, rather than vehicle. Thankfully after hours of running around, we managed to find the part at a NAPA store.

After getting the parts, the repair went flawlessly. Pressing in the studs went great. Mounting the knuckle back on the car worked well. Finally, torqueing down the wheel was a breeze