May 31, 2003

• Hey, man, can you spare a tire?
  
  I really want to get this boat ready to sail by the next regatta. So I had to change the trailer tires all by myself. I’ve watched people do it before, but this is the first time I had to do it alone. And I can say this much, you need a good jack and a good lug wrench.
  
  
  
  I don’t remember who it was who told me to buy this, maybe my godsister or some guy in our sailing club, but THIS CROSSBAR LUG WRENCH is the greatest invention to poor tire-changers everywhere. I mean, you can get some of these fancy geared lug wrenches for a whopping $60 bucks. But this crossbar lug wrench only cost me like $10. And it works great!!!!!!!! I couldn’t have changed those flipping tires without it.
  
  The other thing you definitely need is a good jack and SOMETHING HARD to put it on. I pulverized a concrete gutter (oops!) trying to use it as a base for this 700+ lb. boat-and-trailer. I ended up using an old tire rim for a base, and it worked well. But don’t use your spare tire rim, or… well, you’ll have to jack it back down. A good wood board should suffice.
  
  So, for my cousins who are all learning to drive about now, please don’t forget to check what’s in the trunk of every car you take on a road trip. It may have a jack (mine had one with the car) but it might not have anything to put the jack on……. (like my car didn’t).
  
  It might also come with a lug wrench (mine did), but it might be one of the really sucky ones that you can’t get any leverage with. And for a woman who’s only 5 feet tall and not that many pounds, you really need a lug wrench you can JUMP ON!!!! That was the only way I got those nuts off the hub.
  
  I put up a diagram of how you can balance the end of your lug wrench on a pile of wood, so that you make a kind of see-saw with your lug wrench. And you just stand on the edge of the lug wrench and jump and jump and jump until the *bleeping* nut comes off.
  
  Voila! Don’t need no man to change my tires, dammit!
  
  

  • 10:10 am
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