Woody’s Words – Week 56 – Changing a Tyre

Woody the Safety Bloke shows you how he moves, pumps up and lift a car tyre…

Good day everyone. Woody again. I got a flat tire in my trailer. Now, I was going to show you me taking it off, but there was too much swearing. So, I would have had to have the beeper going. I just want to show you something. I mean I’m a mechanic by trade, so to take a wheel over to my shed to blow it up with a compressor would normally be pretty simple. But just watch this. This is how I have to do it. I have to try and push my wheelchair and push the wheel at the same time.

So I’m going to try and roll the wheel and push my wheelchair at the same time. So it’s not as simple as it looks because it’s got a flat bit on the bottom.

So as you can see, something that’s pretty simple for someone that’s not in a wheelchair, something that probably would have taken you maybe 30 seconds or a minute to do, requires a little bit more effort and does get a little bit frustrating at times, I’ve got to tell you. I do swear a lot when I have to do things like this. Anyhow, I’ve got to pump up my wheel now.

Hey, just another little quick tip. Always wear a pair of glasses whenever you’re using compressed air. I picked that up when I was doing my apprenticeship, and it’s something that stuck with me all the time. So yeah, just be careful on that one. I’m going to put a bit of air in this tire. See if I can find out where it’s leaky.

I’d put a bit of air in the tyre and it still got a leak, so I reckon, I’m going to have to take it to the tyre place. That brings me to my next little message. Just watch how I have to get the wheel into the back of the Ute. So just lift it up. It’s holding a little bit of air now, so it’s a little bit easier to roll than it was, when it had the big flat bit on the bottom of it. I’ll just take it over there to my car.

So the next little issue that I have is, and I know I’ve covered this one before, lifting things that are a little bit heavy. Now, a car wheel is not that heavy. I mean what, I don’t know, maybe fifteen kilos, maybe twenty kilos; I don’t know I’m just guessing. But for most people, males, a piece of cake and most girls can lift a car tyre and car wheel in and out of the car. I just want to show you how I have to do it. I’ll just get the tailgate down. All right, so I’m going to try and get this into the back of the Ute.

So normally, what I do is, just grab it in the middle, hold on to the other side of my chair, you’re going to keep you mind, I’ve got no leg control, so I can’t put too much weight through my legs. So I just got to try and lift it and swing it across just by using my arms and my shoulders. There you go; off to the tyre place.

I just want to tell you a quick story though. I do a bit of four wheel driving and one of my old four-wheel drives had a pretty big set of mud tires on it. One day I went out to the bush and I wasn’t going anywhere really extreme but I got a flat tyre. Anyhow, I got out, jacked it up, pulled the old one off, put the new one on because it was a wine down tyre underneath the back of the car, but then this big mud tire and wheel, I was by myself and I couldn’t physically lift it into the back of the car. So what I had to do was, I had to stash it over in the bush, I covered it up with leaves and branches and I had to go and get one of my young blokes to come back out and pick the spare tyre up.

So there are just the little things that, I don’t know, I have to do. Anyhow, I am Woody. Stay safe Australia.