Poll: Can you change a flat tyre on your car?

What would you do?

  • Change the tyre myself.

    Votes: 203 81.5%

  • Panic and call a family member to come change it for me.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Call the breakdown company to change it for me.

    Votes: 33 13.3%

  • Get recovered to a police storage yard.

    Votes: 3 1.2%

  • pancake

    Votes: 10 4.0%
  • Total voters
    249

kindai

kindai

kindai

Sgarrista
Commissario
Joined
9 Aug 2013
Posts
10,646
Location
Bromsgrove
Imagine, you're happily driving along one day and all of a sudden you hear a strange noise, the steering wheel feels heavy and the car wants to pull to one side.

Carefully, you pull up to the side of the road and exit your vehicle. You take a quick walk around and look what might be wrong.

Disaster! You have a flat tyre. How fortunate though, your car has a jack and spare available.

In such a situation, what would you do?
 
Voted to call recovery.

I've never had to change a tyre before, I imagine I'd be able to dependent on the conditions/situation, but as I pay my money I might as well get use out of it.
 
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Runflats, so no spare on mine, but I have changed the wheel on my daughters car when she had a puncture - so it is possible :)
 
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I would open the boot, pull out the camping stove a frying pan and open the packet of eggs and flour and milk from my shopping and proceed to patch it with a nice fresh pancake.

More seriously I've done it a couple of times, but depending on how I was at the time I may end up having to call breakdown or a friend to give me a hand as there are times I cannot manage something like that.
 
In the real world neither of my current cars have a spare tyre in them so pancake? :p

Last time I actually had a flat I had a spare and all the other goodies so happy to do it myself until I bent the wheel brace trying to undo the ridiculously overtorqued wheel nuts... So pancake again. (or call the recovery service, wait 3 hours for them to spend 10s with a breaker bar...)

In the hypothetical situation though happy to do it myself.
 
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First time I ever had to change a wheel at the side of the road was in the pouring rain on the side of the M5 in the hardshoulder.

Completed it mate.

I was never taught how, just sorta knew from seeing others do it?

It was on my E46 Touring, so it had a spare :p

I was actually pretty impressed with myself as I managed to go from blow out to fully fitted brand new tyre in the middle of Bristol (had to go outskirts) on a 255/35R19 (off the top of my head) in about 2hrs.
 
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I can change a wheel with a flat tyre on a car. Not sure about changing a flat tyre on a car. Sounds like it would be quite awkward. They always take the wheel off the car to change the flat tyre when I've seen mechanics doing it in garages.
 
XeNoN89 said:
I don't have a spare or run flats so I'll be calling recovery
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Changed plenty but similarly, current shed doesn't have a spare or run-flats so would have to go down the "squirty cream" route and try and get it home/to a garage.
Using recovery would depend how far i'm away but otherwise it would be last resort due to how long it typically takes for them to come out to you.
 
Maccy said:
I have run flat tyres, so pancake.
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What about a massive gash in the sidewall.



I'd change it. Always have... The thread that inspired this one has shown a lot of people dont know how to though.
But times have changed.. The AA can fix 99% of breakdowns at the side of the road..... Because most of them are tyre changes.


I manage a fleet of drivers that are employed by one of my contracts. They are told to call Breakdown. Health and safety dont want them changing a tyre unless they've specifically had documented training.
we've still provided a Jack and made sure they all have spares... Its up to them if they wait 4 hours for recovery or change it themselves and be back on the road in 20 mins.
 
I'm useless so recovery to a Police storage yard - I understand this is a free service :p
 
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Can do and have changed mine at home on the driveway. Side of the M6 in rush hour? Nah I bailed and called for the recovery truck - guy said I did the right thing and as of mid February(!) 9 recovery drivers had died attending breakdowns! :eek:

Blocked the hard shoulder with his truck, some traffic wombles parked further back and made a scene and we got the tyre changed!
 
Get my phone out film the flat tyre, maybe even park in a puddle for effect. Hopefully get some random coloured cat or 3 legged dog in the background and post it on YouTube. Fortunately all my tyres identify as inflated.
 
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