Are you trying to replace a broken wheel stud, or just wanting to replace all wheel studs because they're old and you know they're going to break eventually anyway? If you have a 1G with ABS, be prepared for a lot of work. The ABS system on these cars uses a small trigger wheel gear that acts as a speed sensor. This gear blocks access to the wheel studs and forces you to remove the hub if you want to get them. If you're like me, I removed parts of the ABS system under the hood a long time ago. The system is poor to begin with and it's pretty heavy. This means I have no use for the trigger wheel and can remove it by cutting it into pieces, which will allow me to replace the wheel studs without removing the hub. I know some of you might be a little leary of scrapping the factory ABS - truth is, this is an old system that isn't very good. If you just spend some money on some good tires and brakes you should be fine.
1. The first thing you'll need to do is remove the brake caliper and rotor. The caliper is bolted to the hub with (2) 17mm bolts. Once it's unbolted, set the caliper aside in a way that it does not hang from the rubber brake hose. In my case, I'll be replacing these hoses with SS lines at the same time so I didn't really care if the hoses were damaged. The rotor had to be removed by inserting a couple of 12mm bolts into the empty threaded holes and forced off the hub.
2. Next, remove the ABS sensor line that is bolted to the outboard side of the strut - I believe it's a 12mm nut that holds it on. You'll also want to unbolt it from the dust shield in two places. You can also remove the bracket that mounts it to the hub.
3. Get the dremel out and get ready to start cutting the ABS trigger wheel gear around the hub flange. Now the photo I have doesn't illustrate this, but if you cut down on a spline that sits directly over a wheel stud there is less material to cut through and it will be easier to get off. I made two cuts in order to break the ring in half. You can use a flash light to check your progress. Once you cut down deep enough you can wedge a big screw driver or pry bar in there and start wacking at it with a hammer. The ring will break off with little work if you did a good job with the dremel.
4. Removing the old studs is a piece of cake. Just hammer them out. I used a little WD40 to clean up some of the surface rust. Now you can start putting the new studs in. Just slide them in through the back. I didn't have any M12x1.5 threaded nuts so I just used the old lug nuts I had laying around. You can see that I used crow bar and wedged it in between the studs (with lug nuts on them) to keep the assembly from spinning while I tightened down on each stud, pulling it into the hub. I found that using a washer with the lug nuts worked a lot better than just using the lug nut alone. Be careful with the first couple of studs, as the crow bar will be putting stress on the loose studs. Once you get the first two pressed in, use those to wedge the crow bar in between.
That's it. You can throw away the crappy ABS pieces and cut that sensor wire off. Saves some weight and now you have much easier access to the studs next time you need it.
