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
I can change a wheel myself and anybody who drives should be able to. It's not exactly difficult. The exception would be if the car didn't have a spare and only had a can of green gunk and a compressor which is too often the case these days but I would be ok to do that as well. Luckily the previous owner of my car opted for a spare wheel as a extra. As I value my life I probably wouldn't do it on a motorway unless it was very very quiet.
 
pastymuncher said:
I can change a wheel myself and anybody who drives should be able to. It's not exactly difficult. The exception would be if the car didn't have a spare and only had a can of green gunk and a compressor which is too often the case these days but I would be ok to do that as well. Luckily the previous owner of my car opted for a spare wheel as a extra. As I value my life I probably wouldn't do it on a motorway unless it was very very quiet.
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The issue is there is no real SLA with breakdown companies, I'd rather be aware of my surroundings and change it myself, then wait for hours (or be moved off by HA).

Risk appetites and all that
 
Can and have many a time, I used to work in roadside recovery.

I was always told that unless it's missing a wheel to recover it somewhere safe and then do the change, changing driver side tyres next to the live lane on the M25 at 3am in the rain is not a pleasant experience.
 
Pancake.

Could do it myself. But no spare.
So recovery it is.

Changed one of my. Old cars wheels. For new alloys myself. It's really simple.
 
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I have eco contact contiseal tyres on my cupra. Are they are any good. I imagine anything big enough to cause you to stop driving, rather than a slow leak, is too big for it to work
 
I am able to change a tyre on a car, indeed I once stopped to help a person stranded at the side of the road and changed it for them. However, in this poll I voted to call recovery as I cannot use a scissor jack on my car and don't fancy carrying a low profile jack in the boot either. I do have a spare wheel though in the boot (as well as the useless liquid stuff) so I could get the wheel changed and then go to a tyre fitter of my choice to get a replacement.
 
I have changed one on the M6 hard shoulder in peeing rain in the dark. I did however have a heavy hi vis rainproof coat due to my job, a 40 plus tonne artic plowing past was no fun at all. I have not been unlucky enough recently to need to change a wheel. I probably would if the car I was driving carried a spare.
 
I can and have, but last 4 times me or my wife have had flats the tyre foam stuff hasn't been any use so have had to call breakdown services, its a real pain that you don't get spare wheels, or even those daft emergency bike wheels anymore :(
 
kindai said:
In such a situation, what would you do?
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A flat tyre is no biggie. I've changed one before and as long as I can do it safely I'll do it again if necessary. A driver's side tyre on the motorway is going to be a no unless I can pull well off - I'll likely put the hazards on and drive very slowly to the next junction or services.
 
Yes and carry wheel braces in both cars as the OEM wrenches are usually rubbish.

Every time a car comes back from having new tyres fitted or a service where wheels are removed to service brakes etc, I loosen each wheelnut and fasten to the correct torque.
 
I have changed a couple of engines on a Ford and a gearbox on an old Datsun back when repairing cars could be done in your garage without using a Laptop. Tires are very easy and basic to do.

My Suzuki AP50 was always in bits. New cylinder head being fitted or something else. I used to thrash the daylights out of it.
 
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Can do and have done. I had an incident where one of my tyres shredded while I was doing 70 on the M74 which was most inconvenient since my car didn't have a spare so for this I did have to call recovery:

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Since then I have always carried a full size spare wheel in the boot of my car whenever I do any long journey (which is almost every trip I do) and it's left in there all the time for any other trip too, unless I need the boot space.

I accidentally clipped a kerb in another car I owned which destroyed the tyre but fortunately it have a full size spare in the boot and luckily it was on a quiet road so I changed that without any problem at all.

A couple of years ago I was trying to put the spare wheel on my wife's car - the car was at home, but one of the tyres wasn't holding pressure so I thought I'd put the spare on for a few days until I could get a new set of tyres fitted. It should've been so easy, but nope, I couldn't get the lock bolts undone because whatever moron did them up before obviously used an air gun and I ended up snapping two lock nut keys trying to get them undone. Paid extra for a mobile tyre fitter who offered a wheel bolt removal service to have a go at removing them before changing the tyres but he couldn't do it either. Eventually I paid a fair bit of money for another guy to do it and he managed it in mere minutes. Since then, on any new car I've had, I've always made sure to undo every wheel bolt, torque up according to spec and I've also ditched lock bolts for normal wheel bolts. I don't have wheels that anyone would care about stealing anyway but most importantly I know that I can always get the wheel bolts undone when I need to instead of finding out that I can't at the most inconvenient time.
 
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