KAR Trouble Part II: The Howling.

I'm a little calmer this evening. My boys' grandmother took me to work. My mom and stepdad picked up my rim, had a good used tire put on it, then brought us all home.

My family really does a lot for me. I try to help them out in turn when I can and to appreciate how much they do for me. If it weren't for them, I'd probably be walking a lot and it's a minimum ten miles to get anywhere from my house. And then there's that damned alligator. I don't like alligators enough to want to walk by one.

Having said all that, I thought I'd take a foray into how to change a tire KAR style. You'll have to excuse my blurry pictures. I took them with my camera phone and it appears there's a big scratch on my lens.


We'll go step by step. First you need a flat tire. Feasibly, you could easily change a tire if you wanted to without having a flat. But why? Driving a car to the tire place usually means someone will actually put one on for you. I know it's hard to tell this tire is flat, but trust me on this one. The bitch is flatter than Paris Hilton before the boob job.

< . . . >

The next thing you'll need is a tire to replace the flat one. I discovered this when I put the spare in this exact same spot a couple of months ago only to discover it was flat. Changing a tire is a really agitating ordeal unless you have the hook up with things like a floor jack and an impact wrench. So doing this twice for no particular reason other than you couldn't tell the spare was flat calls for a lot of stomping around in the yard and cussing.

This is my new used tire. The tread is not as good as the tire I'm taking off since that tire was new, but that tire also happens to be beyond repair.

By the way, I really love an impact wrench. They make the coolest noises. It's sort of like "RER RER RER WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR." Sort of, but not quite.

(P.S. I told you I needed to cut my grass.)

< . . . >

Next, shove all the newspapers you haven't taken to the recycling center to the side and pull your jack out of the trunk. Around here, this is commonly called a suicide jack. It comes standard with most cars and isn't considered very reliable or safe. This is not a jack you'd ever want to use to change your oil or do anything else that would require sticking your head underneath the car as you may find that your head will not be removed from underneath in the particular shape it used to be.

 You'll also want to grab your tire iron, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

< . . . >

Center the jack underneath the frame of the car according to the instructions. If the ground is very wet as it was today (and basically has been for the past two months and that's why I haven't cut my grass) then I suggest you walk over and snatch a piece of the Boo Radley fence from the neighbor's yard. I wouldn't suggest snatching it from neighbors who live there. Get it from the crackhead ones who stole electricity and then R-U-N-O-F-T. Maybe some would consider this stealing, but I just like to think they're being good neighbors in absentia. Besides, he didn't seem to mind other men borrowing his "woman's" vagina, so I hardly see the harm in a bit of rotted wood.

Now that you have it centered, leave it alone a moment and lets move onto the nuts.

< . . . >

Break the lug nuts. You don't actually break them. You break the seal on them. Loosen them up. Tickle them a little. Make 'em happy. But that's after your twist the shit out of them with a tire iron.Changing a tire is a sadistic ordeal.

You may notice I don't have a tire iron. I have a huge ass Snap-On wrench. That's because the Japanese hate me and no real tire iron fits deze nuts.

What I  usually do since I rarely have an impact wrench is to fit the socket onto the nut, then stand on it and bounce around until the lug nut finally turns to the left.

Also, the standard rule is too loosen and take off lug nuts across from each other or something thereabouts. If the socket is on lug nut one in this picture and you move in a clockwise motion, then you'd go straight across to take off lug nut number three. Or four. Depending on what one considers straight across. As it is, there is no lug nut three to take off of this tire because someone lost some nuts before I bought this damned thing and I never remember that I should buy nuts to replace them. Who thinks about this shit until they're looking at a flat tire and how often is someone lucky enough to develop a flat tire right in front of Auto Zone?

< . . . >

Once you've loosened your lug nuts enough that you can remove them by hand, take them off and be sure to set them in a safe place. Finally,  raise the jack high enough to get the old tire off and the new tire on. This part makes me nervous sometimes because I have had a jack fall before because the ground was too soft. While I've never had my head squished because I'm at least smart enough to not go sticking my head under a car being held up by a shitty jack, it does increase the time it takes to get the damned tire on the car. I will never be asked to join a pit crew anywhere.

< . . . >

Once you take the tire off, this is what you find - rotor, brake calipers, brake shoes, and all that good shit. Not a whole lot of excitement going on here. I need to get the brakes changed soon. I don't like the brakes on this car. They're weird.

< . . . >

Finally, you want to set your new tire in place. Yaaaaay.

< . . . >

Almost there. Screw the lug nuts back on in a cross fashioned order like I explained somewhere else around here. My feet are sticking up there to hold the tire closer to the rotor so I can get the lug nuts threaded as far as I can.

                    

< . . . >

Finally, lower the jack down and tighten the lug nuts. Always be sure to lower the jack first or you'll never get them tightened since the tire will turn freely when not on the ground. 

Also, make sure the lug nuts are as tight as you can possibly get them. I do this by repeating the "standing and jumping on the wrench until the nuts don't turn anymore" routine.

Always tighten the lug nuts. I saw a tire fly off a car once. I don't know what the hell happened. All I know is those poor bastards were stuck sitting on a four lane road while the tire ambled off toward the curb. It was one of the more interesting things I've seen. Which makes me wonder about how boring my life must be at times. 


So that's my How To post for today. You won't get a whole lot of recipes from me because my cooking skills are minimal at best. If I wanted to try and shoot a line of bullshit, I'd say we were raw foodists. But we're not. It just turns out fruits and vegetables are a lot easider to cook if you peel them, cut them, and lay them on a plate.