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Just last week, my wife called me while I was on my way home at night and told me that she got a flat tire. Luckily, the tire seemed to have gotten flat just as she was pulling up to our house. As I went about replacing the tire with the spare tire, I made a few mistakes. I’ve done this probably almost a hundred times, yet I still managed to run into problems. And so, I thought it would be valuable to include some mistakes I made last night along with some pretty bad ones I’ve made in the past.
Out of all the mistakes I’ve made when changing a flat tire, these are the top 5 mistakes that I’ve made. If you can avoid these, it will sure save you from a lot of headaches in the future. Here are the 5 things to avoid when changing a flat tire:
1. Not keeping your spare tire properly inflated at all times.
This is one of those instructions that you always see written in the car owner’s manual, but no one ever follows. When I put my wife’s spare tire on and lowered the car with the jack, the spare tire was almost flat. I had to drive slowly to the nearest gas station to get it pumped up so it could be driven to the tire shop the next day.
A simple check every few months is an easy preventative measure. This ensures you are prepared in the case that you need to use your spare tire. Having a spare tire in your vehicle is useless if it’s complete flat.
2. No flares or warning triangle in the car.
Breaking down on the side of the road eventually is inevitable. Even worse is if there is no shoulder or you can’t pull over in time, you may be stuck in a lane of traffic. Warning triangles or flares are useful as they can warn motorists that there is a hazard up ahead (you and your broken down vehicle). Even if I had to change a flat tire in the shoulder, I would still rather have a warning triangle in front of me. This simply puts another safeguard in place to get drivers’ attention.
3. Failing to chock your wheels when jacking vehicle.
OK, my dad taught me this. Everywhere I’ve read says you should do this. But when I jacked up the car the other day, I decided not to because I didn’t think it would be possible for the car to roll back.
However, my driveway is moderately sloped and I had the rear wheels jacked up. Since my wife’s IS350 is a rear wheel drive car, there is nothing keeping the car from rolling back. Combine that with a slight slope downwards towards the street, and I was asking for trouble. I panicked as the car was slowly rolling backwards causing the jack to tilt and jamb in between the car and ground.
Don’t make the same mistake I did and make sure you chock your wheels every time you jack up your vehicle. If you don’t have specifically made wheels chocks, you can use bricks, stones, or anything that is stable and is at least a couple inches off the ground. This will ensure it is secure and can hold the car in place while you work on the tire.
4. Removing your security wheel lock key from a safe place in your car.
If you have security wheel locks on your wheels, try to always keep the security key in your car in a place that you’ll remember. There’s nothing worse than getting to a shop being told they need to remove my wheel(s) and realizing that you left the security key at home. To resolve this issue, always keep the security wheel lock key in the glove compartment at all times. If it is always in one place in the car, then you’ll never be able to forget it.
5. Forgetting to tighten your lug nuts properly.
I learned a valuable lesson on this topic when I was much younger and would help my dad out when he worked on his car. He taught me how to loosen the lug nuts that were screwed on tight by breaking the lug nuts loose while the tire was still on the ground. More importantly, when wheel is replaced and the lug nuts are secured, the lug nuts must be tightened once more prior to the the car being fully lowered to the ground.
I missed this last step and found out when my dad came back home furious. He said he almost lost control while on the road. As he was driving on the freeway, he heard a loud noise coming from that wheel. The car was shaking violently and so he had to pull over on the side of the freeway. He checked it out and all 5 of the lug nuts were loose. My failure to properly tighten the lug nuts resulted in him almost losing control and getting into an accident.
So there you have it, 5 of the worst mistakes you can make when replacing a spare. I hope this helps you avoid some of the pitfalls that I’ve encountered in the past. Has this list helped you? Is there anything else that you think should be on this list? Please comment and let me know what you think.
