Car maintenance: Changing a wheel

By Stuart Johnston

In this age of ultra-reliable tyres and  road-side assistance schemes, there are many drivers out there who have never had the necessity to change a wheel after suffering a puncture on a trip. Here are a few tips to make sure you avoid making some basic mistakes.

Suffering a puncture is a rare occurrence these days. When an elderly motoring journalist, who had begun practising his craft before World War II (he was at the launch of the original Volkswagen Beetle) was interviewed for a major South African motoring magazine a good few years ago and asked  what he felt was the biggest are of progress made in in motoring he replied: “The fact that we hardly ever suffer a puncture these days.”

Punctures may be rare but when one of your car’s wheels runs flat it can be a major inconvenience. So it is best to be well-prepared for such an emergency. Even if you do have a road-side assistance scheme as part of the warranty or maintenance contract with your car, you may have to wait an awful long time for that assistance to arrive.

This article is aimed at owners of cars that, in fact, are supplied with spare wheels. In some cases today, cars come with run-flat tyres and no spare wheels. Others are supplied with an inflation kit instead of a spare, for space considerations.

But most cars on the roads have spare wheels. Some are full-sized spare wheels which are best kind as they enable you to continue your journey in the same manner and speed, once you have changed wheels. Space saver wheels require you to drive at much slower speeds until you can have your regular wheel repaired and re-fitted.

Be Prepared

Like the old Boy Scout saying, “be prepared” is the motto for successful motoring.

Step 1

Make sure that the spare wheel under cover in the boot is fully inflated. This is a bit of a tedious chore, but well worth doing, so make this  part of your regular maintenance or car-cleaning schedule.

Step 2

Make sure that the jack, wheel-spanner and jack handle (if separate) are all present and in good order,  in the compartment where the spare wheel is housed

Step 3

If you are female driver, an excellent idea is to carry a set of stout boots in the luggage compartment of your car. The same applies to men who regularly wear skimpy-soled shoes. The reason for this is that you might need to apply strong force from your leg muscles on the wheel spanner,  to loosen the wheel nuts. This is difficult if you are wearing skimpy high-heeled boots or sandals. Pulling on a solid set of boots gives you the stability to apply serious force to that wheel spanner.

*This is one of the most important points about changing a wheel. The wheel nuts, even on new cars, are sometimes notoriously difficult to loosen. The reason may be that they have been tightened by compressed air spanners using too much torque. The heating and cooling cycles that a wheel is subjected to may also have the effect of tightening the wheel nuts to an extreme degree.

Step 4

This is optional. But a very good idea. Take your car’s wheel spanner along to a hardware store, and select a piece of stout metal tubing that you can slip over the handle-end of the wheel spanner. A length of about one metre is ideal, and have the hardware store assistant cut this to length. When your wheel spanner is in position, slip the length of steel over the handle. The extra leverage will make loosening the nuts so much easier.

OK, so you have a puncture, darn it!

Step 1

Pull the car over to the side of the road in an area that is as level and even as possible

Step 2

Put the car in first gear, switch off,  and pull up the handbrake

Step 3

Remove the jack, wheel spanner and spare wheel from the boot.

Step 4

Loosen all the nuts on the wheel that is punctured, while the wheel is on the ground, but only by a single turn or two. If you have a front wheel puncture, the wheel will spin once you jack the car up and you won’t be able to loosen the nuts. Once a car is jacked up, the force you need to loosen a properly-tightened wheel will make the jack unstable, so do this before jacking the car up. You want to loosen the nuts, but not so much to make the wheel unstable.

Step 5

Fit the jack to the approved jacking point (see the handbook)  and crank the car up ever-so  slightly to keep the jack in position

Step  6

Now block off the remaining three wheels with bricks or stones – whatever you can find – so that as you jack the car up the car remains stable.

Step 7

Jack the car up enough so that the punctured wheel is free of the ground, and add a good few centimetres of clearance, because the fully inflated wheel will have a bigger diameter than the punctured one. The car need sto be high enough to easily slip in the inflated spare onto the wheel-hub.

Step 8

With the (punctured) wheel now off the ground,  loosen the nuts or bolts (different cars use different methods of wheel mounting) evenly. Leave the topmost bolt for last. Place the bolts in the hubcap (if fitted). Don’t get sand or muck on the nuts.

Step 9

Fit the spare in place and tighten all the nuts evenly by hand with  small turns at a time so that the wheel pulls on straight against its mounting point. Using the wheel spanner, tighten moderately, so that wheel seats properly. You will tighten it fully once you have lowered the wheel to the ground.

Step 10

Lower the wheel to the ground using the jack

Step 11

Tighten those wheel nuts!

Step 12

Pack everything away neatly  and you are on your way. Hopefully you carry a packet of wet-wipes or rags in your car because your hands will be dirty!