Well I went to remove the front wheels off this old 51 PU so I could inspect the brakes and replace the tires. I sprayed the lug nuts down pretty good with BP for a few days and...well 2 lugs spun one one side and 3 on the other. So I'm guessing my only course of action is to remove the entire wheel assembly? or does anybody have a trick to avoid that? Needless to say I'm not happy.

I assume the drum is on the spindle and you can take the spindle nut off and pull the wheel with the drum and get at the backside ?

Some times an impact will rattle them off. if your already using one then your next option might be to use a 3" cutoff wheel on a high speed grinder to cut one side of the nut off

Yes I was already using a impact.... and John that was what I was thinking. I do have a cut off wheel... Why does everything take twice as long as it should?

51 with lug nuts?Every old Mopar Ive had or seen before 56 I believe had bolts not lug nuts.Even the early straight axle I had under my 65 had lug bolts.Rocky

Rocks, the rear had bolts and was the normal bolt pattern. The fronts are lug style and a wider bolt pattern...They have been swapped because somebody put the left hand studs on the passenger side.

Split the nuts in two places with a death wheel and hammer in a wedge to pop the bit off.

Another solution is to grab the nut with vise grips angled so they can't spin around and drill the bolt out until you can break it off.

I'd suggest useing the cutoff rather than wallowing things out more with an impact & maybe making more damage. Murphys law it comes and goes (fortunately)

If you ghot a welder, pull wheel and drum. Tack the studs in an remove lugs.

Trying to save the lugs? If not, just break them off. Take about 30 second per wheel.

I've drilled a lot of wheel studs out to get lug nuts off without damaging wheels.

It would probably be just as easy to pull the drums & tires/wheels off then tack the studs at the back to pull the lug nuts off. Something is going to have to be done before you put it back together, so pulling the whole works off will probably be the easiest, if you can get at the spindle nut....

Its sounding more and more like its time to do a Dakota clip or a full Dakota frame and quit messing with that cobbled up crap. Your going to have so much time and effort into it, just to find out how bad the original stuff sucked compared to what is available today. Gene

they just spin... well spun. I took my grinder zipped them right down the middle and popped the nuts off. 2 wheels 2 beers and 15 minutes and it was done. I'll pull them off tomorrow and knock the lugs out.

Gene I don't have the skill set for that..nor the space. If I did the Dakota swap I'd have to pull everything off of this, store it, then roll the dakota in, strip it then bring the body panels back. Fatmans sells a complete rack system w/ upper/lower control arms, spindles..every thing for $500 or so. The rear is an easy swap.

Cuttoff wheel or blow them out with a torch.

Right. Put a socket on it with a long extension on it. Stand on the extension.

I have to admit I have never spun a stud in a hub before. I've snapped them off, rounded off the nuts. Buy some new studs and tack them in.