So, I had a shitty day at work, and drove home dying for a cold beer. I stopped at the pub to pick up a bottle to take home, and I heard a steady hiss coming out of one of the rear tyres. I did the boring and sensible thing, and drove the mile home, sadly sans beer. The tyre still had air in it when I got home, but wouldn’t had have if I’d spent the three minutes in the pub.
So now I’m not changing a tyre in the dark a fair walk from home, but can do it in the morning, and with a gas station around the corner (I have no idea of the spare’s condition [yes, I know, I know], which was more reason not to try it halfway home tonight).
But as usual, the arsehole taxi-drivers from the taxi base located in the gas station have taken all the parks near my house with their private vehicles, and I’m parked on a gentle hill.
Do I:
a) drive on the flat to closer to my house tomorrow (where there is no hill) - this involves a U-turn and about a hundred metres travel, or
b) change the tyre where the car is?
I figure if I change it there, the handbrake won’t be that great with one rear wheel off the ground, but if I get my steering wheel bar lock out and open it up to a certain point, I can jam it between the driver’s seat and the brake pedal (I’ve used this trick before to test my brake lights when I’ve been alone). If I do that, I’ll be careful to keep my fingers and various other appendages away from danger.
I can whack a brick under a wheel or two, but it’s just that I can’t recall ever having done that other than parkig on a steep driveway. I haven’t done it when I’ve had my fingers somewhere where they could be broken off.
In my personal experience, but no cite, driving 100 m slowly on a completely flat tire will not damage the rim. In the experience I had, driving 2 miles (I believe that’s 3.2 km for Aussies) at 40 mph on a flat tire didn’t damage the rim, though it left the tire completely non-repairable.
Every car manual I’ve ever read has said that you should only change the tire on a level surface. And doing some risk analysis - if you drive to a level surface, the worse you risk is damage to the wheel & rim and a larger repair bill. If you try to change the tire on a slope, you risk having the car fall on you. I’d drive it somewhere level.
Come morning, I expect the tire will be completely flat. Driving on it, even a short distance, will almost certainly ruin it. Of course, it may be unrepairable anyway, but usually a leak can be fixed.
If your handbrake works properly, even one wheel braked will usually prevent rolling on a gentle slope. Nevertheless, it’s quite wise to provide additional braking with a chock and/or depressing the pedal as discussed. I would set a chock behind the front tire on the opposite side of the flat, slowly release the brake just enough to let the car roll into the chock (this prevents it rolling an inch or two when it’s being jacked up), then firmly set the brake.
If you’re careful about where your body and hands are, there’s minimal risk of getting hurt. No part of you needs to be under any part of the car except when you actually grasp the tire to pull it off, and likewise install the spare. During jacking up and down, and loosening and tightening the wheel nuts, I would expect you’d actually be clear of the car.
To prevent the car from swaying around while it’s delicately perched on the jack - loosen the nuts before jacking up the car. Don’t take them off yet - just get them loose so you can spin them off with your fingers.
Now, jack up the car, swap tires, and put the bolts on finger-tight. Put the car back down, and tighten the nuts.
This is good advice, but I’d amend it to installing the bolts somewhat more than finger-tight before putting the weight of the car on the wheel. First get them all finger-tight, then snug them up further with a wrench, then let the car down, then do the final tightening.
I’ll also amend my previous advice. In my post where I said to put a chock behind a front wheel, I was assuming the rear of the car is on the downhill side. If the front is facing downhill, the chock goes in front of the wheel.
Do you have a portable inflator?
If it will hold air, however briefly, I’d inflate that sucker to the tire sidewall max rated pressure and then drive the car to a flat spot ASAP.
Or use a can of Fix-a-Flat. The only tire I have replaced on the side of the road in the last twenty years was one that developed a bubble in the tread. If I could have filled it with Fix-a-Flat and driven it to a tire shop, I would have.
This raises a question I’ve wondered about. I’ve been told that the service techs basically cannot repair a tyre after it has been “fixed” with Fix-a-Flat. Is this true?
I have had tires fixed several times without as much as a comment. The tire sealer is a thick latex which needs to be wiped out, but the area to be patched is cleaned and scraped before the patch is applied.
Some of the cheaper brands of tire sealer use (or used to use) a flammable propellant. I haven’t used these and it’s a good idea to tell the tire guy if you used them. There is a very slim chance that the tire could explode if they demounted the tire without taking some minor precautions (I don’t know what these precautions are though.)
My wife accidentally drove a few feet on a flat tire a few days ago, and when I tried to reinflate it, the pump stayed at zero pressure for ten minutes. Finally I realized she’d unseated the tire from the rim of the wheel, and having seen my brother and my dad re-seat tires with a giant tool consisting of a pry-bar-device with a big ol’ compressed air tank attached, I despaired of being able to drive to school that morning … but when I pulled on the tire with my hands it miraculously re-seated and inflated.
So, even driving on a flat tire for only a few feet can cause some big problems, but you might get lucky.
In the cold light of morning, the thing didn’t seem so difficult, especially following the tips in this thread. I looked at the hill, and decided it wasn’t much at all, so I changed the wheel right there.
placed drainage tile (all I could find - bricklike, but not quite as thick as I’d like) under diagonally opposed wheel, downhill
gently rolled car forward an inch or to until I felt the chock “take”.
handbrake jammed on hard
used the steering lock and its ratchet mechanism to depress the brake pedal.
loosened wheel nuts with spanner until they were finger-loose
jacked up car (could hear front wheel creaking a little, but otherwise no movement)
changed wheel (car behaved itself perfectly)
Nuts back on wheel finger tight, then a solid turn with the spanner. Then decided the car was stable, and my fingers were clear, so just went ahead and tightened the things right up
Lowered car and packed up
Spare was on only 10psi, but that was adequate to get to the gas station and fill all four tyres.
The bloody flat was caused by a piece of flat metal about an inch long. I am not sure if that’s repairable, but I’ll give it a shot as the tyre is pretty new.
