My Flat Tire is STUCK!

Accident change tire Spare Tire Spare Tire Is Stuck Stuck Tire Tire change Tire Stuck wheel

Flat tires are inevitable. If your vehicle has tires, eventually one of them will go flat. The hard truth is: Flat tires never happen when you want them to.

 

My last flat tire happened on a deserted stretch of I-35 somewhere in no man's land between Iowa and Missouri in the depths of the winter. I was in my car on the way to my parent's house, 45 minutes from the nearest mechanic, with a temperature of -15° F and a windchill of REALLY COLD. It was 5 AM. Some flat tires are worse than others; this flat tire came with my sleeping toddler in the back seat. I was alone, in heels, and up a creek. 

 

What's worse? Once I'd gotten the car jacked up and the lug nuts off, the tire was stuck. 

 

Some day you might find yourself in the same situation, and most of us don't carry a mallet in our trunk. The standard kit that comes with cars is a spare tire, a flimsy crank jack, and some fashion of wrench for the lug nuts. So when you find yourself on a sparse shoulder in less-than-ideal conditions, how are you going to get that stuck tire loose? My answer came in the form of an obscure Reddit post that I cannot even locate again. Because I don't want you to fruitlessly scour Reddit in -15° F like I had to, here's the trick: Smack it with the spare. 

 

It's just that simple. Take the spare tire and swing it against one side and then the other until the tire comes loose. I was on a narrow stretch of interstate in the dark without room to kick the tire as it was my front, driver's side that had gone flat. I wasn't about to get hit by a semi for a flat tire. Sometimes no amount of kicking can knock the tire loose. Regardless of why it's stuck, if you can lift the spare, then you can hit the flat tire with enough force to knock it loose. 

 

There's no good time to get a flat tire; this tip might make an already bad situation just a little bit better.


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