All you need is one short sharp length of metal, such as a bent nail
It’s the school run. We’re on our way — me, the daughter-in-law, and Miniature Person — when I feel that slump of a car that’s not happy on its wheels. It’s a single-track road, barely room to pull to one side. A back tyre is flat as a tack, in body and spirit.
I’ve not changed a wheel in decades, and it’s a first for daughter-in-law, but Miniature Person is enthusiastic about “helping”, which slows things down.
The workout begins:
- Weight-lifting to excavate the boot. We find one temporary wheel covered in warnings about speed, and a vast medley of tools including several wheel braces and two jacks, both tiny.
- Gymnastic contortions to see under the car and figure out which is the jacking point — there are several contenders.
- A bonus stage against the clock: clear everything away to let a car go past; set it all out again.
- A precision and dexterity session to extract the covers off the tops of the bolts. We might have a vast medley of tools, but there’s nothing that’ll touch these embedded little blighters, and it takes handbag ingenuity, but we get there in the end.
- Leap aside as a van clambers past, scattering bolt covers far and wide. I put them on the roof for safety.
- A test of strength and balance jumping up and down on the wheel brace to loosen bolts apparently tightened by someone with a grudge.
- Some serious aerobic work with the jack handle on a jack the size of a postage stamp.
- More aerobics with the wheel brace to get the bolts out. We could have churned a lot of butter if we’d done this with a different set of equipment.
- A medley of weights and balance; off with the old wheel and on with the temporary one. And we’re done.
We’re no sooner back on the road than an unearthly scream alarms us to the edge of cardiac arrest. But it’s just the old wheel in the boot losing the rest of its air. We deliver Miniature Person only 15 minutes late for school and are pretty pleased with ourselves. We reckon we could give one of those Formula 1 pitstop teams a run for its money.
At the garage, we watch enviously as they deploy a hydraulic jack and electric gizmos to sort the bolts, and wonder at the ease with which they circumvent those pesky bolt covers. In fact… damn… what bolt covers?
We drove off with the bolt covers still on the roof.
Anyway, it was a good workout, but once every few decades is as regular as we’re planning to make it.
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Originally published in The Haven
