Sunday, December 4, 2011

The Misadventures of Kenny Changing a Flat Tire

Well I went out to my jeep to grab some dinner tonight and noticed that my back tire is going flat. I first considered trying to try to drive to the local gas station to fill it up, temperately. As I don't have much luck when changing tires. But I know it's bad to drive on a flat and I can see the nail sticking out of the tire so I opted to change it. Now at this time I don't know if my spare if good or not. I've had so many flat tired in the past year I can't remember... but I take a chance.

I grab my lug nut wrench and start to loosen the lug nuts before I start to jack the jeep up. Since it happened at home and my drive way is dirt and gravel I have two large slabs of concrete that I like to put under the jack so the jack doesn't collapse like it has in the past. I jacked the car up and there were no issues.. I started to unscrew the nuts.. one done, two done, three done, four done.. things are going well until I get to the fifth nut. Unlike the other four this one is tough to get off. I keep telling myself lefty loosie, tighty righty, just so I knew I was doing it the right way. I struggled to unscrew that nut for about 10 minutes and after about five rotations..wham.. it fell off. I pulled the tire off and examined the lugs and noticed that my fifth one was shiny and jagged. I checked the wrench and sure enough the nut and part of the lug broke off and now were jammed in the wrench. This is my only lug nut wrench so I had to get those bits out before I could proceed. So I opted to go to my garage to find something that I could try and pry the jammed nut out with it. I first tried a pair of pliers with no luck. I then grabbed a chisel and it had a sharp edge that I might be able to slip in and pry them apart. Only problem is that the chisel is still in it's packaging when we purchased it. So I attempt to open it and do so but in the process I slice my thumb open. For a little cut bleed a lot. I quickly grabbed a paper towel to stop the blood from getting all over the place. And another 10 minutes of almost slicing more digits off I manged to get the nut out of the lug nut wrench.

So my flat tire is off. All my tools are working properly and now I attempted to take off my spare tire (still don't know if it's good). There was only one issue, my spare tire has a lock nut on it. Because it's attached to my back door (I have a Jeep Wrangler if you didn't know). So I had to find the "key". I searched my glove box where it's normally at and of course it's not there. I search all throughout my car and I can't find it. I then remember that some things will sometimes fall back behind the glove box and into the dash of my car so I remover the glove box and shove my hand into the dark space feeling around for the lug nut key.. success.. I found it and as I pull my hand out I run it across something sharp and it tears about an half of inch of skin off my other hand... and I'm bleeding again.

I pull off the spare and it seems to be okay (know with luck today I really expected it to be flat as well). I replace the spare, this time with only four of the five nuts. (which should be okay) and I put the flat back on the back of my jeep and hopefully will get that repaired soon. I lowered the car and the tire looks great. Took about an hour to change and sliced two hands open but I did get the tired changed and the jeep didn't fall on me.. so I think it was a success.

1 comment:

  1. Ouch!! Just reading that is painful!! But luckily you managed to get the tire changed!

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