rear wheel cylinder -and- front wheel stud

[antirice]

ok, two Q's. First, what's involved in changing my passenger side rear wheel cylinder?

Second, what's involved in changing a front wheel stud on a Grand Am?

[Themeneea]

for the stud, i believe it just has to be hammered out and have the new 1 replaced.

not sure about the wheel cylinder.

[antirice]

I ask because I was going to try that, but the spindle is in the way and it looks like you have to remove the hub assembly to get to the studs out

[martopg]

yeah i have a missing (broken) stud on my front left wheel. My local gas station said it'd involve taking off the brakes and stuff. would be like a half hour of intense labor which = ~$50, so I'm driving studless for now... well, four studs as opposed to five.

[prljeep]

wheel stud- You should be able to hammer the stud out. There should be an area on the steering knuckle that has an indentation (I think it is facing the frontof the car.) It is a tight fit coming out and you will probably hurt the threads, but it sounds like it is bad anyway. You should be able to get the new one back in, in the same location. I had to grind a little bit of the head of the stud down to get it in the indentation, but it did not effect the how the stud sits. You could beat it in, but risk ruining the threads. It sure beats paying $50 for a $3.00 job!

[MantaGreen97]

You can hammer the stud out but you'll need a very large hammer to do this effectively. Plus you shouldn't "miss" because you'll either be hitting the body of the car or something else, lol. If you can't get it out by hammering, then you can use a universal tie rod end puller to get the stud out--this tool doubles as a wheel stud puller. You simply compress it until the stud pops out. Really it should be a wheel stud "pusher" since it pushes the stud out but it's still called a puller in the service manual, LOL.

Wheel cylinder is kinda sucky because you have to dismantle a bit of the drum assembly to get it out, IIRC; and then you have to reset/adjust the brake clearance (and since you're doing it on one side you should probably reset the clearance on the other side as well so it's even).

[ALMB~Nova]

both wheel cylinders should be replaced at the same time, you should remove all of the brake hardware and brake shoes also. You should probably change the brake shoes and the brake hardware, as they may have been exposed to brake fluid. Care must be taken when removing brake lines, over time they can become rusted and brittle.(line wrenches are a great help). On some vehicles, it is not necessary to remove the backing plate to get the wheel cylinders out, but when i replaced mine, it seemed necessary. I replaced wheel cyl., brake shoes, hardware, one short piece of brake line and i put new drums on my car for about $100.00. not too bad. a couple other things to note; the brakes should be bled and while you have everything apart, check the e-brake cables