Changing and rotating tires

First you need to have your car in postion on the lift with all doors and objects in the car or put away.

Step 1: Tools needed

For this you will need these said tools:
- Air gun
- Torque wrench
- Air hose
- Impact Sockets

Comments

[yo man]

if you don't have a car host you can use a 
floor jack.

[chuckr44]

The way I was taught to rotate tires: front tires to straight back. Rear tires are swapped left for right, THEN go forward. Many garages simply swap front for rear tires.

[Its Giggles]

To Chucker44 The rotation of tyres depends on if they are radial tyres or not. Radial tyres are when they are designed not to be reversed in rotation direction. Non radial tyres can be rotated either foward or back because they have no angled groves. Non radial tyres are switched at diagonals, ex: front left to right back and vise versa. But radial tyres are switched front left to rear left, et cetera. Im sixteen, google if if you didnt catch what i just wrote. :P -m

[Derin]

*whips out driver handbook* F!F!F! WHERE IS THAT DIAGRAM!!!!!!!! Sorry,have to tell you later.

[Mammuth]

I guess you won't see any car lifts in people's garages an Hydraulic Floor Jack would be more ideal. Regarding the wheels swapping I believe that you should follow the arrow on the tire that indicates the spinning direction (front to rear same side)

[Babyshoes]

I want to point out that the process you have described is not to the City and Guilds standard (which is the process I happen to know) for removing and replacing wheels. You didn't damp down or loosen the wheel nuts first, for example. You need to have the wheels resting on the floor but not with the full weight of the vehicle on them to use the torque wrench, but in order to put the car down you need to nip the nuts up a little more than hand tight or they will put strain on the spindles. You mentioned removing them in a star pattern, but in fact it isn't really important which order you remove them in, however it IS important to replace them in a star pattern, and to tighten them with a torque wrench in a star pattern. You might also want to talk about WHY one might rotate wheels - if you have an irregular wear pattern on your tyres it may indicate a problem with the steering geometry, shocks or brakes. Rotating the tyres simply extends the wear of your tyres in such a situation and doesn't solve the underlying problem. Might also want to mention safety advice - I notice you are wearing safety glasses in a picture, and they should always be worn when using air tools. You might also want to explain how to check the safe working load of the ramp and weight of the vehicle to make sure you can safely lift your car. Please don't take this too hard though, you have got the basics right with clear photos - I just wanted to point out some small points that could get an inexperienced person into trouble!

[killerjackalope]

A couple of additions... On a car an air gun poses two problems, first there's the fact that the nuts/studs will end up too tight, possibly damaging them and making it nigh on impossible to do a roadside repair with the supplied vehicle tools, also if your air gun works at 90PSI it means that when it fires up the tank should be maintaining 90PSI, which is rarely the case unless you have an absolutely monstrous tank/compressor though that little gun wouldn't make too much difference. Sorry about the minor rant, used to be a tyrefitter and the amount of poor souls having been ripped off at Kwik Fit only to find they couldn't remove the nuts was shocking, not to mention the times you found destroyed nuts and threads because they used the bigger gun...

[Babyshoes]

I was going to mention not replacing the wheel nuts with an air gun, but on re-reading the instructable you will see that he actually advocates doing them up with fingers then torque wrench, which is not what I would do but does work! Your little rant about over-tight wheel nuts is true though, because not only does doing them up too tight mean that they are difficult to undo on the side of the road, but it can also destroy the threads on the wheel studs and even eat through those nice shiny alloys you paid so much for!

[killerjackalope]

I realized not long after that the author hadn't put them back on that way, I read through too fast for my own good...

I've seen alot of scrapes and dents around the nut/stud holes in alloys from just that, not to mention the damage done to the backs of them from lazy employees not gripping them properly with a tyre machine, it's very obvious on deeper alloys and the bite marks aren't cheap to repair...