• 𝚝𝚛𝚔@aussie.zone
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    6 days ago

    Our EV doesn’t have a spare, which I wasn’t concerned about as I’ve had maybe two flats in my driving history and one of those I just pumped up and drove to the tyre shop for a repair.

    What did catch me out recently was not having a jack. It makes sense though - car has no spare, so why include a jack?

    We got a screw in the tyre a few weeks back and it was leaking too bad to pump up for even a short drive. I figured I’d jack up the car, take off the rim, and take it in the wife’s car to the tyre joint.

    Things to note:

    1. No jack, as mentioned. Went to the local auto store and bought a pretty mid range scissor jack that looked like every other car jack I’ve ever used.
    2. EVs are really bloody heavy. A standard 1600KG scissor jack could barely move the thing. Went back and bought a much heavier duty trolley jack.
    3. A 3200KG trolley jack makes lifting the car easy, but the jack itself is huge and leaves no space on the lifting points to put jack stands.
    4. An EV is really stiff - lifting the rear passenger side resulted in every wheel except the front drivers side coming off the ground.

    Didn’t want to leave it perched on a jack and a single wheel, so took the tyre off and ended up replacing the screw in the hole that was leaking with a bigger screw… Then pumping it up and driving it to the tyre joint.

    Moral of the story - might be easier to just carry a small selection of different sized screws and a screw driver.