How to Install Spare Tire 2003-08 Honda Pilot

You get a flat tire on the side of the road and you need to access your spare tire. Open the hatch. Inside this compartment over here, it's got a little diagram of a jack. Push that tab down. Open it. The jack is located in here and the tools. A little tip: if it's hard to get this up – this one came out pretty easily – you can spin this counterclockwise to collapse it. It'll actually help it go in there. And two, if you're driving around, and you're going over bumps and there's a rattling, check your jack. It may be loose. You can come over here, and you can turn it just by hand. Make it little bit tighter. Get rid of the rattle if you've got one back there.

We're going to take this out, so just turn it clockwise – I'm sorry, counterclockwise. Pull that out for now. Take our jack handle, and then part of your jack handle also has the lug nut tool on it.

To lower the spare tire, it is not under the floor. It is mounted under the vehicle. There's a cover here marked with spare tire. You need something flat to open this. This, unfortunately, doesn't have a flat tip on it or anything. I'm going to try to do this with – you probably have some keys on you. Try to get them under there. Just work it out. Ideally, a flat-bladed screwdriver would work best, but if you're on the side of the road, maybe you only have house keys, you can pop that open. It's got a little diagram to tell you how to do it.

Inside of the lug nut tool is a smaller hex driver. That's going to fit over this. It's basically a little cable winch, and as you turn it counter clockwise, you're going to lower the spare tire. Give myself some slack. Reach under here. Grab the tire. It's sitting on a – it's got a flat piece. You can feed it up through the center of the wheel and out.

So, we're going to jack up this car and put the temporary spare tire on it. Even though this tire isn't flat, we're going to show you how. If you're on the side of the road or you're not on level ground like we are, you should chock an opposite wheel of one that you are changing, so just chock the front tire, grab some rocks by the side of the road, some just to put in so the car can't roll.

This vehicle is equipped with a wheel-lock key. I've got our wheel lock key here. You want to make sure that you know where this is. Keep it in a safe place, somewhere near around the vehicle. Hide it somewhere in the car if you have to, but you want to have it on hand in case you need to change a tire on the side of the road. I’m just going to spin it until it fits in there. Take our lug wrench and loosen these all up before we jack the car. A half turn's usually good.

We're going to take our jack. This part of the jack is going to sit on here to lift the vehicle up. I'm just going to use my hand to get the jack close. Usually, you can turn it a little quicker with your hands than using a tool. See how far you can go by hand. Pretty far.

Take our jack handle with the loop end. It goes through. Take your lug nut bar or wrench. It's got a square drive in there. That fits over here. Hold it here, and just crank it. Just keep turning it, lifting the bottom of the wheel up and just off the ground enough. That's perfect. Take that out now and place that right there so it doesn't get lost. I can finish taking off the wheel with my lug tool. I'm doing this with gloves on. It might be a good idea to throw a set of work gloves or latex gloves in with your jack and tools so that if you need to change a wheel or tire on the side of the road, you can keep your hands clean. This wheel is coming right off. If it's stuck, you're going to have to hit it with your hand or give it a swift kick to pop it loose.

At this point, you'd have to put this tire back in your vehicle, probably in the back. It's not going to fit underneath. Take our temporary spare. These have a limitation of how far you can go and how fast you can drive. See your owner's manual for that information. They're really only intended to get you off the side of the highway and to some place that can fix your tire.

Get one of our lug nuts started. With the lug nut tool, we'll get these seated down. I'm going to lower the vehicle. Put this back in here. Turn it the opposite direction. As this gets real loose, we'll just start undoing it with your hand. Just get this down and closed. Put it in your vehicle. Before you take off with the vehicle now on the spare tire, take your lug nut wrench tool and tighten the lug nuts as tight as you can go. If you don't have a torque wrench, don't worry about it, just get them as tight as you can get them. Still go in a cross pattern. Put our lug key in here.

Okay. Now you can put your tools back in your vehicle. Put your flat tire back inside. This will get you on the road and to some place where you can have your tire repaired. Before you drive off, be sure that you resecure your spare tire carrier hoist

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