Winterize your car: change tires yourself: what is important when mounting winter tires

At the latest in october, motorists should take care to change from summer tires to winter tires. If you want to mount the winter tires yourself, you should consider some important points.

In principle, changing tires is quite simple, as long as you have the right tools at hand: a decent jack and the right wheel wrench. The truck jacks are actually only intended for emergencies and in my opinion are not a sensible option for changing tires.

About the person

Michael margraf is a trained car mechanic and a passionate car mechanic. He shares his expertise on his youtube-channel "cargraf" among others.

Changing tires – step by step

  1. Park car on level surface, engage gear, apply handbrake
  2. Lifting the car
  3. Loosen wheel bolts, remove tires
  4. check wheel bolts/wheel studs and wheel nuts for damage
  5. remove rust with a wire brush to prevent the rims from "sticking
  6. Attach tires in the direction of rotation
  7. Tighten wheel bolts
  8. check air pressure (for winter tires 0.2 bar more than for summer tires)
  9. Take the car off the jack, tighten the wheel bolts (crosswise)
  10. Depending on the model: reset the tire monitoring system

You may also be interested in:

ADAC has tested 28 new winter tires for SUVs, vans and mid-size cars. For SUVs, only a few tires are recommended, most of them only perform satisfactorily. In the mid-range segment, two cheap tires fail in wet conditions and in aquaplaning tests. Read everything about the ADAC winter tire test 2020.

In october tires should be changed. Here are suitable beside the classical winter tires also so-called all-weather tires. find out in this article which type of tire is recommended for your purpose.

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Thursday, 08.10.2020 | 05:42 | michael sa.

Basically the golden rule is,never let a jornalist show you how to change a tire.

Thursday, 08.10.2020 | 05:42 | henke roland

For me, there is no difference between removing a spare wheel and changing to winter or summer wheels. Either many of today’s drivers are too stupid or are being portrayed that way by the so-called professionals. The fact that many car drivers pay a lot of money to change their car wheels twice a year is either a fad or convenience. Many simply dumb down.

Always tighten the wheel nuts diagonally to prevent possible misidentification. But only real professionals know that. 🙂

Wednesday, 10.10.2018 | 17:09 | till schmitz | 1 answer

Also inspected for damage to the flank and balanced. And you don’t have a torque wrench just like that either.

Thursday, 06.12.2018 | 19:27 | mike singer

If you change the winter tires yourself, you save money and this money you can invest in a torque wrench. Costs really not the world.

Tuesday, 09.10.2018 | 10:32 | bernd konrad

I would recommend everyone to loosen the wheel nuts when the car is still firmly on the ground. Of course, don’t remove the wheel nuts completely, just loosen them. Then lift and only then solve, which then goes very easily. If you only loosen the wheel nuts when the car is jacked up and you need real power, specialists have already managed to pull the car off the jack.

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