Lessons Learned from My First Flat Tire

[shew01]

Today was a gorgeous day, and my wife and I took our 6 volt car out for a bit. We stopped a while, came back to the car, and noticed a flat. This was my first flat. We’ve had the car almost three years. We driven it about 9000 miles, and I installed a new set of American Classic radials with new tubes about 1400 miles ago. We just got home a few minutes ago after changing the tire, and I plan to investigate the cause of the flat tomorrow. However, since this is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share some lessons learned in hopes of helping newcomers to the Model A hobby.

- When you have a flat, hopefully you’ll have all the tools you need in the car with you. Lesson learned: Test the tools you plan to keep in the car to make sure they will actually work as expected.

- I probably could have just pumped up the tire and driven home, if I had a 12 volt system and portable air compressor with me, or, if I would have had a bicycle pump with me. Nope. I didn’t have any way to put air in the tire. Lesson learned: Take some way to inflate a tire with you. So far, this is the only compelling reason I’ve seen to have a 12 volt car. I plan to install a 12 volt inverter in the near future. Hopefully, it will be able to power a portable compressor long enough to inflate a tire. Maybe someone will post to this thread if that is a bad idea.

- Start the tire change by confirming that you can actually get the spare tire removed from the car before bothering to take the flat off the car. (There just isn’t a lot of point in removing the flat if you cannot remove the spare.) This was a near miss for me. I didn’t have my normal toolset with me. Although I had the engine crank with the lug wrench built into its end, I had never tried to remove the spare with that particular tool. I could reach the top two spare lug nuts fine, but my luggage rack normally stays bolted in the upright position, and there was not enough clearance to use the crank lug wrench to remove the bottom nut that was only reachable through the luggage rack. I didn’t have the right size wrenches to loosen the luggage rack and fold it down out of the way. I also had a foldable X lug wrench in the car, but the X lug wrench could only reach the bottom spare lug nut at an angle and could not put much torque on the nut. Fortunately, the bottom lug nut on the spare was not super tight, and I managed to wiggle the spare loose while several onlookers stopped by to chat. (The chats didn’t help much. Oh, well…. That’s another story.) Lesson learned: Carry ALL the tools you will need to change a tire in the car with you. Make sure you can remove the spare with the tools you plan to have with you. Make sure you have the correct wrenches to loosen the luggage rack, if you have one.

- When I first purchased the car, I bought a nice looking scissors jack to keep in the car, but I never tested it because I didn’t want to scratch up the nice red paint on the new jack. It turns out that the foldable crank is a REAL pain to use on this particular jack. Lesson learned: Test the jack you plan to carry in the car.

- It would be handy to carry a torque wrench in the car. Keep torque values in your smart phone.

- You may want to carry some disposable vinyl gloves in the car to keep your hands reasonably clean.

- You may want to carry some Wet Wipes with you to clean your hands if you do not have disposable gloves.

- A few days ago, I threw an old rug in the car. It was handy to lie on while crawling under the car to position and crank the jack.

It was a beautiful day, to change a tire.

Happy motoring. [emoji4]

Does anyone care to share more lessons learned?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk