How to Change Spare Tire 2006-10 Ford Explorer

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 2006 Ford Explorer. We're going to show you how to change out your spare tire on the side of the road in an emergency situation. However, if you are not in a safe place, on solid ground, or don't feel comfortable performing this procedure, be sure to contact an emergency roadside professional for assistance.

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Open your lift gate, and in the back of the vehicle is a cargo cover here, which lifts up and allows us to access all of our emergency roadside tools. Rotate the pin to release the tension on your tools. Rotate your jack eyelet counterclockwise to loosen it. Once you've loosened the jack, remove the pin, open the retainer, and remove your jack from the vehicle. Lift up this cap and rotate this nut with the tire iron counterclockwise to lower the spare tire under the vehicle. Lift the spare tire up. Slide the keeper up on the cable and lay it out flat to slide through your spare tire. Remove the tire from under the vehicle.

Now it is fair to assume that the tire under your vehicle is probably dirty or a little rusty on the wheel. This is perfectly fine. Just make sure you check that the tire does not have any bubbles in the sidewall, that there is air in the tire, it has good tread, and there is no visible damage, punctures, tears, or dry rotting that would be unsafe to drive on.

Before jacking up the vehicle, you'll want to chock your wheel. Either carry a wheel chock or a block of wood with you, or, in most situations, you should be able to find a large piece of wood like a stick or maybe a large flat rock on the side of the road. If the vehicle's nose is facing downhill, we'll want to chock this way. If it's facing downhill at the rear of the vehicle, we'll want to chock this side. Or if we're on level ground, since we'll be raising the rear, the front will want to roll forward. We'll chock this side just the same as if the nose was facing downhill.

For extra precaution, if possible, you can chock both sides of the wheel, and we like to do the one opposite the vehicle on both side and end. So when we're replacing our left rear tire, we're going to chock our front right. Now in the interest of time, because you want to get off the side of the road quickly, the fastest way to jack the car up is to start by holding the eyelet and just spin the jack around to get it to open up faster. Since our vehicle's pretty high off the ground even with a flat tire, this can save you a lot of valuable time. We'll then place it underneath and on the frame rail. Before lifting the vehicle, use your tire iron to break all of your lug nuts loose one turn. We'll then take our tire iron and this hooked tool which has a square end that seats through this yellow hole in the tire iron. The hook then goes through our eyelet and we can use our tire iron as a handle to rotate it. Once you've got the wheel of the vehicle off of the ground, you can use your lug wrench to finish spinning off the lug nuts.

Now our wheel is pretty well stuck onto the hub. There's a couple of emergency ways to try to remove this, since you probably don't have a rubber hammer or a dead blow handy. We'll install one lug nut on a couple of threads, and kick back against the tire to try and free it from the hub, but be careful, because that jack is not incredibly stable underneath, and we don't want to knock the vehicle off. The other method, in extreme situations, is to use the other spare tire as a hammer. Once the wheel and tire is loose from the hub, we'll remove that lug nut again and remove the wheel and tire.

Install your spare tire as well as your lug nuts as tight as you can before lowering the vehicle. Once the lug nuts are on as tight as you can get them, we'll lower our jack back down and put the weight of the vehicle onto the tire. Once the weight's off the jack, we'll remove it and close it up the same way we opened it. Once the weight of the vehicle is back on the tire, use your lug wrench to make sure those lug nuts are as tight as you can get them. As always, be sure to tighten the lugs in a cross pattern, skipping one every time, to make sure the wheel is tightened down evenly and doesn't pinch or wobble.

Reinstall your spare tire jack. Reassemble the holder here. Put the pin back into place, and just tighten the eyelet up by hand until it's secure. Use your lug wrench to tighten the crane up. Close the cap, collapse your lug wrench, place your lug wrench and eyelet away, and since we want to get off the road quickly, we'll just place our tire into the back of the car and be on our way.

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