Rep Power: 0

Car details: Honda Civic 2001 LX 2dr coupe, 90,000 miles.

Hey guys, so I came to my car one morning to discover both front tires were totally flat. I looked at the tires and it was obviously slashed (very clean cut). Sigh...

So anyway, while taking off my front left tire, one of the lug nuts was being very stubborn. I put so much pressure on while taking it off that I broke the wheel stud! Great, day can't get much worse than this.

I go to discount tires, get both tires replaced and put them back on my car. $150 total (the manager gave me one tire for free, which was cool).

Anyways, I got to another shop to see how much it would cost to replace the wheel stud, the guy says about $70 with labor and taxes. Unfortunately there is some kind of metal shield behind the rotors that is preventing them from easily taking out the stud, so the entire hub assembly needs to be taken apart and due to a lot of rust the wheel bearing would also have to be replaced, which now makes the total $270 (parts and labor).

So my question is, can I just drive around with one wheel (front left) having 3 lug nuts instead of 4? Or is this highly dangerous?

 
Rep Power: 199

I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe a 4/5 or 5/6 or above studs, but not 3/4. Get it fixed. The price doesn't seem to outrageous for the work, the only thing I wonder is this. To do a wheel bearing almost always means removing to knuckle and you have to disturb the upper bolts. I wouldn't do that w/o an alignment ESPECIALLY sense you just put new tires on the front... Just to calm your regrets, if it twisted off coming off it is highly likely that it was cross threaded the last time it was put on...

 
Rep Power: 208

would it be okay?

probably yes,

would i recommend it?......no

get it fixed, that nut is there for a reason, the price sounds reasonable, basically you have to do all the work that is involved in replacing the wheel bearing, the hub needs to be pressed out and back in