Basic Car Maintenance: How to change a wheel
In this video guide, i’m going to guide you through, how to change a wheel on your car, for when the inevitable happens and your stuck road side, not knowing how to change your wheel
It’s always a trouble when you break down roadside and if you do, the most important thing you need to do is make sure your situation is visible to other road users and that you carry out any maintenance safely. This can include putting out your orange triangle at a safe distance behind your car to alert other road users and also wearing a high-vis jacket, so you are visible at the road side.
Step 1:
First of all, we need to locate the manufacturer supplied tool kit, which is normally located under the floor carpet in the boot of cars or behind/ underneath the drivers or passengers seat in vans, which in my case is behind the drivers seat. Once fetched, roll out the tool case to view all tools, you should have a scissor jack/ locking wheel nut tool and a wheel nut wrench amongst some other tools.
Step 2:
We then need to find the spare wheel or space saver wheel, which can be found, again underneath the boot floor or up underneath the rear bumper on the underside of the car or van. If it is under the boot floor, then simply un-attach and lift out of the boot.
Step 3:
If your spare wheel is underneath the car, then you have to find this socket point inside the boot or the back door. Find the relevant wrench from the tool kit and start to unwind anti-clockwise, this will then lower the rear wheel from the underside of the car/van. Once fully lowered, you have to detach the wheel from the cable harness or metal cage that is holding it to the underside of the car. This can be slightly fiddly!
So now we have all the tools and the spare wheel to hand to be able to tackle changing the wheel.
Step 4:
We then need to get the scissor jack and find a solid structure underneath the car which will be man enough to support the weight of the car without braking. So please don’t try and lift your car up by any plastic materials. Once we have found a solid part of the chassis to support the car, we need to place the scissor jack and start to raise it up until you can feel it is holding some of the weight of the car, but also make sure your wheel is still on the ground.
Step 5:
Once the weight of the car is supported, you need to get the correct wrench and locking wheel nut tool, to undo the wheel nuts, but just loosen and don’t completely wind off.
Once wheel nuts have been loosened, you can then start raising the jack higher until the whole wheel is off the ground. You can then unwind all the wheel nuts and take the wheel off the car.
Your halfway there, now you’ve got to do everything in reverse to put the spare wheel on the car.
Step 6:
We place the wheel back on the hub and make sure all the bolt holes line up and do all the wheel nuts up to finger tightness, once completed, start lowering the scissor jack until the wheel touches the ground, but only enough so your able to tighten up your wheel nuts. Then you can lower and remove the scissor jack from underneath your car.
Now your all done, just pack away your tools and pop the duff wheel in the boot so you can easily access it and give it to your local tyre shop to either fix or get a new tyre. If you need help locating a great tyre shop near you. Use AutoAdvisors easy 3 step system to finding local tyre shops in your area.
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