Easy, Illustrated Instructions on How to Fix a Flat Tire

Also, a little music box opens and plays a tune.

In the trunk, the spare tire will probably be held in place with a wingnut of some kind.

Remove this.

Poke your spare tire to see if it is flat. If it is rock hard, it will work. If it is a little soft, it probably won't work. You can mount it if you are really desperate, and see if it has enough to hold up. Don't try to inflate it with your lips. Don't take this personally. You probably haven't laid a finger on this thing since Valentines day.

The spare tire will probably be a scrawny version of a real tire. This is good. Real tires are heavy, and this one should be a little easier to handle. Ken calls the miniature spare tire a "donut" tire.

Here is a summary of the procedure:

Jack up the car
Remove the old tire
Put the new tire on
Lower the car
Drive away

With five friends, you can probably just lift the side of your car and pull the tire off.

If you don't have five passengers, you should use the jack.

Before you jack up the car, Turn off the engine and make sure the car isn't going to roll. Get everyone out of the car and away from traffic. If you have a baby in a car seat, I recommend leaving her in the car, strapped into her car seat. If you are a nervous wreck, roll a window down, so you don't accidentally lock yourself out of the car.

Put the car into gear (which will help stop the wheels from turning), pull up the emergency brake and wedge something under one of the three unflat tires. This wedge is sometimes called a "Chock".

What should you wedge under there? I don't know.

Things that you probably don't have in your car, but that make good wedges:

A block of wood.
A red brick.
Donald Trump's wallet.

Things you do have in your car, but won't make good wedges:

A water bottle.
Keys.
Camel Filters in a crushproof box.

What you will probably end up using:

A shoe
a folded towel
Toblerone.

The jack.

Twist the center screw to raise and lower the jack. This type is called a scissor jack.

The hook thing connects to the jack.

And the lug wrench connects to that. There are a lot of different pieces of equipment that manufacturers can put in your car to make this work, but it will probably come together something like this.

Please continue reading page 4 of Easy, Illustrated Instructions on How to Fix a Flat Tire.

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