Friday evening the teen came home from work and complained their tire seemed low. Since it was late, I said I would check it in the morning. Sure enough, the tire was completely flat. Since I was going to be out of town the next week, it made sense to get this repaired that day. An unplanned project was underway. It is far easier to take a tire in for a repair than the whole car in on a spare that has to be installed. That is to say if the car even has a spare. So many newer cars come without a spare.
The first concern with jacking the vehicle up is to check exactly where the jack must meet the frame. This seemed like a good opportunity to show the teen how to find this information in the manual as each car is slightly different and it should happen rare enough to not need to commit this to memory.
I was able to get it jacked up and pull the tire off. The cause was obvious. She must have run over a screw. Given the tread of the tire and the location of the puncture, I knew from experience this would be an easy repair.
The second concern is where to get the tire fixed. You can buy a repair kit and do it yourself, but I knew that Discount Tire repairs for free. Since I was able to be flexible, I went right when they opened to drop it off. Luckily they work quickly as it was fixed on a Saturday within two hours. I was able to have the car running again by Noon.
There is nothing particularly impressive about these sorts of repairs, but it’s important to walk through the steps on how to solve a problem with younger people. They can then leverage this experience when they run into their next flat tire and not let it feel like the end of the world.