Firmly apply the parking
break, and make sure that you’re transmission is in Park, or otherwise in
gear so that the vehicle won’t roll.
Remove the spare tire, jack,
and lug-nut wrench from the trunk of your vehicle. If you’re unsure of
they’re location, check in your owner’s manual. They’re almost always
underneath a wooden board, down in the well of your trunk.
Locate some logs, rocks, or
other blocky, heavy objects to use for blocking the wheels of the vehicle.
Blocking the wheels ensures that it won’t easily roll off the jack. In
order to block the wheels, place the objects firmly underneath the front
and rear of the tires.
If necessary, remove the hub
cap on the wheel with the flat tire. The hub cap can be easily pried off
with any flat-head screwdriver. This will give you access to the lug nuts.
Use the lug-nut wrench to
loosen the lug nuts on the wheel (remember, counterclockwise rotation
loosens, while clockwise rotation tightens), but don’t remove them
entirely – simply crack them loose so that you can remove by hand later.
If they simply refuse to crack loose, you may need to apply some
additional pressure to the wrench. One method of applying this pressure is
to carefully place the heel of your foot on the end of the wrench, and
then proceed to give it good, hard, downward kick. Another method is to
use a tool called a leverage pipe (you may want to have one of these in
your roadside emergency kit). A leverage pipe is just a peace of piping
large enough to fit around the end of the lug-nut wrench, but narrow
enough to fit fairly snugly. By fitting the end of your leverage pipe to
the end of your lug-nut wrench, you effectively lengthen the wrench
itself, giving you a bit of extra leverage to help in the removal of the
nut. If you plan on purchasing a leverage pipe, simply take your lug-nut
wrench into any hardware or plumbing store and find a size of solid pipe
that fits.