Having driven for a lot of years, with very patchy mobile phone coverage for a lot of those years, we sometimes forget the basics for our children.

Thursday night made me think.  Coming up the A1 through Cambridgeshire in the rain, I got a puncture. I won’t draw you a picture but swearing was involved and so was being soaked through as I had to change the tyre on the side of the road.

But it did set me thinking.  So over the bank holiday (much to my wife’s amusement) I ran through the steps required to change a wheel with my two youngest children – him 17, her 23.  And I can recommend it to every father.

It wasn’t raining in Yorkshire on Saturday (I’m not that nasty), but we had the usual moans of “do I have to. . ” and “I’ll get dirty“, but I think in the end, they appreciated it.  Especially when I pointed out, that at best, on the Thursday night before Good Friday even the RAC will take 3 hours to get to you.  AND what happens if you’re in one of the few mobile phone back spots.

So . . .

• Find where they put the jack. (What is a jack dad?)
• The wheel out of the boot.
• The small clip to get the wheel nut covers off.
• And the wheel brace / wrench.

The questions of where to put the jack I was expecting and able to demonstrate, the wonder at why we had to lock wheels I wasn’t.

Wasn’t it easier when wheel hubs had studs to locate the new wheel? And you remember to slacken the nuts slightly before you jack the car up?

But we got there.  Lots of struggling to get the wheel out of the boot, and how you might have to stand on the wheel brace to undo a very tight wheel nut, but they both achieved the end result.

I had considered buying an Easter egg for the fastest time taken, but in the end they both got one.

As a recommendation.  Especially if you have a daughter.  Buy an 18” length of pipe to go over the wheel wrench handle to make it a bit longer. You don’t really want to be leaping up and down on the wrench at the side of the road.

Oh, and buy an RAC membership!  

Does anyone remember the stupidity of certain French manufacturers who put the spare wheel outside the car, underneath the boot floor? Assuming the small latch to release the frame wasn’t seized solid, you had to try and push a deflated tyre and wheel back onto the framework and lift it back up into place while simultaneously trying to put the latch back into place, with one wet, dirty, oily, hand!

You know who you are Renault.