How to change car tyres properly

by Michaela

You can easily change your car’s tyres yourself and save money for the garage. We will show you step by step how to do it.

Instruction: Change your car tyres properly

First park the car on a flat surface and apply the handbrake to prevent the vehicle from rolling away.

  • Remove all hub caps from the car, if necessary, to access the wheel nuts. Some wheels are secured with a rim lock, for which you have an extra key.
  • Take the cross spanner and loosen all the nuts from the first tyre. The nuts are only loosened, not completely unscrewed.
  • Apply the jack and pump the car up until the tyre is floating in the air and a finger fits between the tyre and the ground.
  • Important: You may only use the jack in the prescribed places. These are partly marked on the outside of the body and are also stated in the manual.
    • Now you can loosen the wheel nuts completely. While doing so, still hold the tyre with one hand so that it does not fall off.
    • Then carefully remove the tyre and label it. The letters “VR”, for example, stand for “front right”.
    • Now pick up the new tyre. Note that right and left tyres stay on the same side for life. If the front tyres on a front-wheel drive car are more worn than the rear tyres, you can fit the rear tyres on the front and vice versa. Only left and right must not be swapped.
    • Fit the new tyre and screw in all wheel nuts by hand. Then hand-tighten the nuts with the Phillips spanner.
    • Lower the jack carefully (!) and slowly. Take the torque spanner and tighten all the wheel nuts.
    • You must set the Newton metres correctly on the torque spanner. You can find out how many newton metres are necessary for your car in the manual or by doing a quick Google search.
    • Important: Always tighten the individual wheel nuts crosswise. This means that you do not tighten the wheel nuts clockwise one after the other in turn, but always select the opposite nut.
    • The first wheel is now changed. Repeat these steps for all other tyres.
    • After 50 km, the wheels may become a little loose again. After this stretch, you should retighten all wheel nuts with the torque spanner.

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