No kidding you are just changing it fast and tossing it all back in...worry about organizing it later too dangerous to hang around the Interstate. I only had my first flat in 43 years of my life. I was able to drive off the interstate and into a parking lot. It was sort of fun...LOL
@@Meekerextreme i did that on my mini cooper. I must have driven 3 or 4 miles on the flat cause ill be damned if some old person or some dumb teen girl on her cellphone kills me while im changing my tire
or when its 47 Celsius in Australia and your on bitumen cooking, and you leave the wheel spanner on the ground and burn off your hand when you touch it!
One of the many things that I really enjoy about your videos is that you don't take for granted that your audience already knows what to do. The detailed explanations are wonderful. The videos are well edited. Thanks for being a great source of professional information for us VW guys and gals.
But maybe a black steel rim would look better :/ it's like they wanted it to look nice but then also wanted you to remove it as soon as possible. It's the one night stand (or Hooker) of spare wheels.
bad enough having to change a wheel , without having to wait an extra 10 minutes to to inflate it , not so long ago all cars came with a wheel that matched the other wheels on the car perfectly , SPACE SAVERS ARE A STUPID IDEA !
@@802Garage most trucks and SUVs have their spares under the rear of the vehicle. I'd rather have a full spare (that my 2 SUVs don't have) than a donut.
It's all about "Kraft durch Freude", the joy that only hard work can bring. I guess they want to share that joy with the car owners too, like some kind of "Fahrfegnugen".
@@buddyclem7328 "Fahrvergnügen" ;). I'm german and i don't think the procedure is complicated at all, very self explanatory if you are not really dumb. Most complicated part is the space saver, but ok, it saves space and how often do you really need to change the tire on the road?
It works fine if you use it properly. But I also thing buying an upgraded jack for your car is a good idea. The Touareg jack is a better jack than the ones in cars.
@@HumbleMechanic The little scissor jacks? I've never had a problem. I love the ones that come in Subaru vehicles. Always nice to have a few around from old cars to help with strange jobs.
@@HumbleMechanic Yeah its fine if you are in a nice level parking lot or garage but useless if your on the side of the road on the highway on some gravel uneven ditch it will fall right of the jack or on an icy drive way or hill then you are sol.
those jacks are some serious death traps if used on gravel, i had to jack my car at home and used it (Audi A4 B5 Sedan) on tightly compact gravel and dirt, when the wheel was off the ground the car started to slide against me and fell over the jack.... had to get an another jack to get the car up and away from the Widowmaker. I have never seen those spare tires in Norway except for in an old 1990 ish Porsche, all VAG cars here get the compressor and a 1/2 Liter bottle of latex sealant goo
I replace the stock jack with a hydraulic jack and wooden plank, and to make my life easier I have a electric torque wrench to ease the tyre changing process
Great advice at the beginning. Wish I watched this before it happened on a lonely country road in the middle of nowhere! Thanks for this vid dude, was a great help.😊
You should chuck the tire diagonal to the one you are working one, if you do it on the same axle, although you are jacking one side, the other lifts as well, the car can or might run over the chucks and fall(been there done that :D)
I wished you uploaded this video before. My sister used to have a ‘12 Tiguan and she got a flat tire once. We spent 10 minutes reading the owners manual to remove the bolt covers and 15 minutes figuring out how to use that jack without destroying the car.
I doubt I’d ever own one or need to know this. But I know some poor person is frantically searching the internet on the side of the road for this info, and I’ve been there. So thank you for this
This is why i always immediately take out the factory "tools" if you can call them that and replace them with real tools. A real jack, and tire iron. I also like to keep a breaker bar and some sockets too just in case someone else needs help.
I remember once I was changing my tires and the first time I used that shitty scissor jack it folded and fucked up my fender. I now throw that shit in the garbage whenever I see it
@@Xachremos yeah i feel the vw pain. I have a gti and i had to use the deathtrap of a jack they give you bc i let my dad borrow my actual one. It tends to slip out very easily. It isnt awful but never use it on a heavy vehicle and always use a jackstand, even just when changing a tire.
Lol I'm one of the weirdos that has a torque wrench in their trunk. Then again I have a small tool box with most of the tools I need to fix most things on my cars. Most of my cars have been beaters, so I keep tools with me to try to fix them when the eventually break. So far, I haven't needed to fix my 2002 DeVille on the side of the road.
I have a torque wrench, a breaker bar with 19mm socket, mini hydraulic jack, electric tire inflator, emergency tire plug kit, chocks, and a block of wood in my trunk. Everything I could possibly need to change a tire. And so far I’ve never had a flat tire....
Joel Ankeny all those tools are in my daily driver (‘99 Subaru). I would make a snide comment about the VW jack, but my 300D is a 1985 model and it has a jack that makes the Widowmaker look family friendly.
VW engineers have done a stupendous job! They took what should have been a simple, straight forward tire swap and completely over complicated it and introduced more points of potential failure. Job well done!
The handle of the screwdriver is designed to help spin the loosened wheel bolts in and out quickly. Also, as an added safety measure, I always slide the tyre under the rocker panel and I take it off. If the worst happens the flat tyre/wheel will support the car and save your leg/arm/whatever. Plus, you are still in a redeemable situation with space to reinstate the jack, rather than that corner of the car being slammed into the deck. Keep up the good work.
The most dangerous car to change wheels on would be a older Subaru, a front wheel drive with the parking brake on the front wheels. If your on a hill of any kind and have a flat on the front you have to block all the wheels or when you jack up the front it will just roll away.
At least my 80s Subaru better jack than, it is memory of the car and I still use it sometimes.. This horrible design was in Fiat 128, absolutely a death trap given the amount of rust.. Needless to say used it first and last time, lol..
@@shhhdontshout yeah nah bro, the economy of scale doesn't apply to this, there is already designs that can be used, that are already machined, and tooled up it would in fact cost them more per unit for that jack, (tooling costs over already there and in supply designs etc) so, I can assure you, there is no cost saving to be had there
@@copuis mk3 vw Jettas came standard with these and amazingly mine still had the jack when I got mine. The outside section with the threaded rod going through it wore down and it struggled to stay in the correct form under pressure. After it almost killed me one time I never used it again
I think they were more interested in saving space, not weight. In most VWs, there is a hard styrofoam insert that sits inside the spare tyre. This contains all of the breadown tools, including the jack. Their design just takes up less space than the standard scissor-style ones that the other makes use.
@@copuis My 2002 Volvo has the same jack and my 1996 Mercedes had a similar jack just much more bulky looking so I'd guess the R&D has been long paid for these aswell as the tooling for them.
This is already stupid: space saver tire, hooking up the pump to the battery jump, and widow Maker, this is dumb, honestly should just be a normal tire spare, with a cigarette plug for pump, and there's no reason to put a cover for the jack point, if they engineer these extra things better, I'd probably only consider it won't try to buy
For example, Mercedes uses a similar Jack with a rectangle part that goes into a jacking slot, the tire is ready to use, and there's no pump, not nesacery cus at the time, Mercedes designed every thing to fit within the tire, and also, Mercedes also has different lug nuts, but that's because the spare is thinner, Mercedes c240(w203) 2002 base model,and it's still way better than this ridiculous process
I keep a breaker bar and proper socket and a wrench after getting 2 flats. I have an older style scissor jack and a ratchet makes it tolerable to use. I also have one of those portable compressors in the back seat for inflating tires as needed. Not really a big kit but makes the process much easier. I do like that wheel guide bar though.... That's a pretty neat idea.
That wheel hanger is more important than people realize, I tried changing a tire on an Audi A6 without a wheel hanger, that'll make a Priest curse like a sailor.
@@IIGrayfoxII I'm not sure of the advantages of bolts vs lugs but most German cars have bolts and they're a lot more difficult without that hanger to hold the wheel in place.
@@gmax876 If your car has lugs you have 4, 5 or 6 small wheel hangers(depends on how many lugs your car has). Still a pain to get on but once you get one hooked on, you just have to rotate the wheel slightly and she'll fit
I bought a nice plug kit and compressor so i dont have to use the spare all the time. Just to get me to the tire shop. Got an impact and a good compact jack for flats where a plug just wont do. Live on a gravel road. Used to get like 3 flats a month. Got tired of changing them in the rain and snow.
That is INCREDIBLY complicated. I suspect the majority of your viewers will have no trouble with this ridiculous process, but the average Joe/Jane will have no clue what to do. Why VW insists on overcomplicating what should be simple is beyond me. What are the odds that 1) all the parts will actually remain with the car over time, 2) the inflator will work when you need it, 3) that spare tire will last more than one use, or even be usable 6 years down the road when you need it, 4) the average person will remove the pinch weld protector and replace when done, 5) use that jack correctly, and 6) figure out how to deflate the tire when done with it? Does this ACTUALLY save any space, what with the inflator and other bits? No way it can save weight, which is the usual reason for donut spares. And it simply has to cost more than a simple donut. Nein!
Sure it looks nice, but it is expensive to replace. Sure you dont use it that often but they need replacing, if the car is used not a bad idea to do so.
First, who the thought it was a good idea with a space-saver spare wheel? Whoever it was must have had a serious mishap whilst thinking. Where are you supposed to put the wheel you just took off the car? It wont fit the space where the space-saver spare wheel was and it sure as wont fit in the boot (which is filled with all the stuff the family packed for the weekend/holiday trip). Second, that tire wrench is a joke. I seriously doubt it is useful for anything other than swearing at whilst failing to loosen the lug nuts. My experience is that for some reason lug nuts needs much bigger tools than that to loosen (even if they have been torqued to spec).
They probably design the lug nut wrenches to enable you to still loosen the lug nuts but not big enough so that you seriously over tighten the lug nuts even if you stand on the end of the wrench.
@@Nesten321 that's exactly it. They aren't on there all that tight. In the rain it might be a pain in the arse to get a good grip on, but otherwise it does the job fine. I don't like that jack though. You've to be cautious and familiar with its use to avoid setting it up wrong. I don't mind sticking the wheel I'm not holding under the frame, just in case.
I have found t bar lug wrenches to be the best and keep one with a 12 ton bottle jack in the truck. 4 different sized heads fit almost every car and the t shape always you to pull and push breaking lugs free easier
Really? Is that a reason not to buy a car? I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything. I am curious. A silly jack/tire design is not a deal breaker for me. So I’m always interested to see it from another point of view
@121bham I'll stick to my real tire spare and real jack, oh and so stupid alignment pin, and no inflating the tire in the cold, rain, wind, traffic... My F150, I jus jack it up change the tire throw the shit in the bed and drive away.
@121bham yes. I live in nice warm California, no Rusty tire drop winch for me. Literally less than 10 minutes to change a flat. Less if I just throw the parts in the bed when done, let the tire shop put it back
Technology has improved to the point where a 5 minute tire change now takes 15 minutes. Under IDEAL circumstances......not in the ice or snow with freezing, brittle phalanges.
Gotta love Germans, they way over complicate EVERYTHING. Very novel way to go about things though. I cant believe they still use those Fing wheel bolts. I dealt with them on VW and Porsche's years ago, figured they stopped that lunacy by now.
There are several newer Jeep's and Dodge cars using lug bolts now. I don't mind them, the worst ones are the lug nuts that swell up from corrosion and you can't get a socket on to get them off.
I kind of like the wheel bolts. Then you can use a guide rod like they show. I'm getting older and its hard to lift the tire and line up the wheel studs. I keep the ends of the wheel studs painted white so they are easier to see.
Recon I will never complain about cranking a spare down from the back of my truck again. I bet if a person lost that little ring to remove the lug covers they would be hosed.
Great tutorial though & after some consideration I'll keep the space saving skinny tire in the morning I'm heading out to purchase a Ryobi the cordless power inflator.
When I bought my new vehicle Jetta 17 it came with a donut. That is the first upgrade I did to my car. Put a full tire in the back because it fits I might as well.
what is funny is that I wanted to purchase the car without the donut instead bringing the cost slightly higher at sale by asking for a full spare but they said they couldn't fulfill request. would you have any guesses why? manager couldn't explain.
In the meantime where do you store the full size tyre safely and what he didn't show is a boot /trunk full of luggage that you have to remove at the side of the road at night.
Are you kidding me??!! Vsw takes a 20 pound tire and replaces it with 30 pounds of tire and compressor and junk in order to save half a cubic foot of space??? No wonder they are a failing company. What a bunch of idiots. I miss my 69 bug.
@@capnskiddies imo they are building complicated and unreliable vehicles and charging outrageously high prices for them. Vws are nice for a few years but then they start falling apart, and getting them fixed to keep them on the road costs a fortune. Due to their complexity the average homeowner can't make repairs themselves to save money (in fairness this is becoming true for many brands, just more so with vw and other German brands). Most of the electronics on v w are troublesome, and the plastic in their switches is cheap and gets brittle and cracks too soon. Just my opinion.
Can, to clarify, .perhaps they are not failing as in going bankrupt, although time will tell about that. But imo they are failing in just about every other way a carmaker can fail. They are failing to be good engineers, they are failing to make a reliable product, they are failing to make an economical product, they are failing their customers.
And no matter how straight they look with car on the ground they start twisting or leaning as soon as they have any weight on them. Emergency use only, floor jack for home use
This is the most complicated video on how to change a tire Lol... I just band my wheel last night cuz of a crazy fog and rain in combo with a moon surface road and the band was so bad that the wheel made contact with the outer rod generating scary sound so i had to change the tire ... did it in like 3 mins. I can hardly believe that car enthusiasts watching your channel need such detailed video on how to change a tire :D Anyway very well done video ! PS: That some crazy looking spare tho PS2: Car manufacturers need to put a torque wrench for the american market you guys are obsessed with torque specs
My wife's Volvo came with the same style jack. She parked her car with a flat front tire on sloped ground. There isn't much level ground in a lot of Atlanta, so not much choice in the matter of parking. I was able to lift the car properly per the manual's instructions. When I went to loosen the lug nuts, the jack slipped out and I would have lost my toes had they been any closer to the rim. My truck comes with a scissor jack, and with that I was able to remove the wheel safely. These jacks are garbage. How much more money and weight can it cost to add a proper and SAFE jack???
ive had one of those jacks fail on me from my 2005 touareg. i just bought the car in october of 2022 from the single owner who bought it in 2005. the jack equipment had never been used but as soon as the tire made it off the pavement...clunk! the threads ripped out of the jack and the car came back down. glad i wasnt underneath it. this video is the first ive heard of the jack being called the widowmaker but its totally with merit. sheeesh
Tip: slide the tyre underneath the vehicle once taken off, that'll prevent damage to the brake disc/rotor and other parts if the car slips off the jack. Pull the tyre back from underneath the car after you have put the spare on and locked it in place with lug nuts. Then lower the car and you're good to proceed with tightening.
"I don't expect many people to have a torque wrench in the back of their car." My #GolfVIClub mates didn't too until I helped one of the clubmates to cure "that rattling in the front left wheel". He happened to have 3 bolts sitting loose and two bolts at around 30 Nm instead of specified 120 Nm and the wheel itself was rattling under load. He was lucky to show up at the club meeting the same day he changed the winter wheels to summer ones at a "seasonally operating tire workshop" where the wheel was tightened, as he said, with an impact gun, presumably at a very low torque setting. Nice collapsable anti-roll boots by the way, should find such ones and stop carrying two 1.5 lb "truck-size" rubber ones. The serious issue with the VW jack design is that if placed on a solid, but slippery surface it can slip from under the car and literally grind into the rocker panel.
That tire is some insane rubber tech. Wow, what a job! That jack is actually pretty clever though. Only thing I have done with a Touareg is take all the front subframe bolts from one in a junkyard. Someone had taken the engine and the bolts were long and super high quality. Gonna use it to space a subframe for a V10 swap! At least that's the hope.
I’m glad my 06 Beetle came with a full size regular tire for a spare along with a regular scissor jack. I can’t believe they couldn’t fit the same in that vehicle.
Reminds me of a 88 Supra I had, full sized cheap spare that I replaced with a normal wheel and deflated tire (slightly thiccer tires than stock). And through a small air compressor into a pocket in the rear hatch.
Widowmaker for sure. I had a jetta back in the day, and the jack stripped out and dropped. It had a NYLON block that it threaded into. VW replaced it with a new one that was not nylon
This is why all the vehicles I own have full size spares, an exhaust inflated airbag jack, and a battery powered rattle gun with correct socket and adjustable torque, mounted in the boot on charge. A canvas bag also contains gloves, hand wipes, etc. Even my wife will happily change a tyre now. Quick, easy and very safe.👍👍
never knew the exhaust jacks existed, thanks for the topic to look up. I'm not in the off-road world, but it seems interesting. What brand do you have since there seems to be about 4-5 of them? Cheers.
@@K03sport Though mine is a few years old, I purchased the exhaust jack from Multispares, a heavy vehicle parts supplier, in Wingfield, South Australia. This airbag is manufactured with kevlar, so is extremely strong, flexible and puncture proof, but not idiot proof. Size is 1500mm long x 500mm wide, will expand to 800mm high fully inflated, and support 5000kgs. Just attaches to vehicle exhaust via hose. There are several on the market but mine is made in Australia. Hope this helps bro 👍👍
Better convert that battery powered rattle gun to one that can hook up to your car battery. The original battery will be dead by the time you need it. Nothing is more sure to work than a 100% metal manual wrench.
Before you were allow to drive in my family dad made you change a tire... I can not see my 5 sisters changing one of these tires... Oh they would have done it but there are way more steps to change that tire compared to the 1965 VW bug we drove. Nice video. I can see me making the sells man showing me the knobs and buttons of my new car. Also showing me how to change the tire.
Look at the Maus tank then imagine trying to repair the track as it's covered by all that armor and you need a MASSIVE hydraulic jack to lift the tank.
to be fair there are only 2 additional steps wich are: remove a simple plastic cover and inflating a tire, if you can't handle it, don't blame the germans
It was a solution to a Porsche problem. Huge rear wheels on a 911 and nowhere to keep a spare that large without making the car 3 feet longer. Solution. Deflate the tyre.
All I can say is YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! This is an exercise in engineering something NO ONE will actually do on the side of the road, except MAYBE in extreme cases. In these modern times and with German engineering being what it is, I'm totally surprised this isn't being done by a Bluetooth initiated robotic tire changer. This is way too much manual labor. Crazy!
Ey what's up J! Honestly I can see doing this on the side of the road, as long as the lugs weren't rusted solid. It's really only about 15 mins of work in the end. Typical nonsense, though much worse than in a smaller car or even in a truck. Except in a truck when the tire is stored under the bed it is usually so rusted in place you have to call a tow anyways! Hahaha. I agree though, quite a faff.
B6 a4 fell on me twice damn Jack one was on The 78 extension in Jersey luck has it though that chassis is pretty rigid I got the Jack back under no problem
ordered one off amazon right now after I torn my back while trying to put the tire on, holding it in the air, rotating it correctly and getting the lugnut in at the same time
It’s because many of the German cars use lug bolts instead of studs and nuts. So, there isn’t anything to help hold and align the wheel while you get a nut started. That’s why they give you something to thread in and make it easier to get the wheel on.
Because the way it was done before last decade was better and simpler. Full-size spare, fully inflated. And no car should be without a spare. Do you think car makers have removed all that functionality for _our_ sake?
If you use wheel spacers, I'd suggest keeping a set of the "regular" length lug bolts in the spare compartment as well. It may be fine, but the thought of putting the spacer on with the spare so the longer bolts will work bothers me....just something to ponder.
Way to over complicate having to put a spare on. Lets give you a jack that won't work on most surfaces and can easily let the car fall on you. Lets give you a flat tire as a spare that you have to air up first before you can use it and hope the compressor works and is still there. Then that short tire iron that most won't be able to use cause they can't get enough force to get the lugs loose. then when all is said and done where are you gonna put your full size tire? At least in my Jeep compass I can put my full size tire right back where I got my spare tire from. Oh ya cause it comes with a full size aired up tire as a spare.
Fun fact about any Volkswagen from year 2000 up is you can roll the windows up and down by putting the key in the door and turning it left for a few seconds or right to close them
It’s true. Newer ones you can do it with the remote. Did you ever see the commercial where the guy drags his wife out of the bathroom to show her that? It’s basically my wife and I. Ahhaha
