I dont know why a welded front would cause knuckle studs to shear. When it comes to welded there seem to be 2 opinions. Its harder on the dif, or easier on the dif. The nature of a lunchbox is in the backlash, from my understanding, and that equals SLOP. Welded will have less slop in the dif as compared to a lunchbox. I for one have a lot of buds that run a welded front, and they never have any issues, other than it being hard to turn on grippy stuff.