How not to change your tire

[Lee M. Levitt]

...or perhaps I *should* have read the directions before I jacked the car up
and removed the wheel.

There's a little gizmo in the Audi toolkit that you're supposed to screw
into the hub before you remove the last stud. This keeps the two sets of
holes from becoming misaligned.

I found that if you're by the side of the road, on a slight incline, with
nothing but your Audi jack on a 2x4 in soft dirt, there's little hope of
getting those holes realigned.

Course this is after the wheel with the flat has been removed.

Can U say stranded?

All I needed to to was to take the car out of gear and to release the
parking brake...but this of course would have had the consequence of letting
the car move far enough back that it would probably have fallen off the
jack. At this point I bailed, and called AAA. 1 hour 20 minutes later they
come by with a BF floor jack, crank the car up, I pop it out of gear and
take the brake off, 30 seconds later the temporary spare is mounted.

Doh.

Remind me to drive just a bit further next time...on the flat...so I can
change it without a hassle.

Only two bright points here:

First, I stopped trying to do it by myself before anything really bad
happened, like me dropping the car off the jack, or trying to inch the car
forward while it was *on* the jack (thought about it tho <grin>)

Second, I picked up the nail that caused the flat at a good 85+. One minute
later I was at a stoplight, with the tire slowly going flat. If that light
had been green, I might have shredded the tire at speed, with unknown
consequences.

Lee
'95.5 S6 avant
'96 A6 quattro avant