[spjonm3]

Yeah.. I had a similar problem (except for the wheel falling off thing). I had to replace to wheel lugs on my truck. Once time I was at a tire shop (no finger pointing here, they are usually a very good shop) and when the guy was trying to install the lugs on of them stripped out a stud. I then rotated my tires I don't think I torqued the lugs down to the proper weight (I guess that's the right term). I then took it to get an alignment and they wanted to rotate the tires again, this time one of the lugs was stuck on the stud. Looks like it cross threaded. Well, they never took it off. I then decided to take it off and the lug sheared off and half of it was stuck in the lug.

I think the first thing was that the studs are soft and that you really need to make sure that you use the proper torque setting. The second thing was that the lugs were cheap (alos appeard to be a soft metal) and I found alot of metal filings in the threads. I changed all my lugs to Gorilla lugs ( I think they were about $35 from 4WP) and they seem much better quality and don't look like they will start "falling apart" allowing cross threading.

Now.. to change the lugs is very easy.. just remove the wheel, remove the brake caliper (remove to two bolts that hold the caliper to the hub), take the brake rotor off, then tap on the stud (or what remains of it) until it backs out of the hub, then insert the new stud (about $6 from the dealer), then reinstall disk rotor, then install brake caliper, then install wheel and torque to 83lbs.