it takes less than 10 minutes to get an axle out of the rear of mustang.

Do us all a favor and unbolt the wheel, remove the drum, unbolt the backing plate and take out the axle. edit - nevermind I see I sounded off late

As for what cause it....if the lugs nuts were not tight, they will sometimes break (I had this happen) and it is more prone to happen if you have a wheel spacer. Or years of over torqueing and one gave out...causing an additional load on the others and they just started in a dominoe effect...by happy it held together.

I pounded out my old lugs with a sledge once. And installed new lugs with my 1/2 air impact.....it turned out bad and I ended up with one lug holding the wheel on, but it had loosened up and backed out so you can imagine what it looks/like to have a wheel attached to an axle on a single pivot point.....the other 4 had all snapped and were gone completely.

 

Suit yourselves gentlemen. But if I had my tech's pull the axle or remove a wheel hub every time one of them broke or cross threaded an axle stud with an air wrench, I'd be broke. While it's a simple task to pull an axle out of an old Ford rear, you can't just pop the axle out of a a later "C" clip rear or pull the hub assembly out of a front wheel drive anything. I've never seen it take more than about five minutes to complete the process with the axle/hub on the car. And I can't ever remember using our shop press to press studs out or in, it takes way too long.

 

WEll i got my car back. For 194, i got the studs fixed, some new lugs, and two tires mounted and balanced. Not a bad deal for me.