12 Sept 2010

Change / Remove Audi A4 Wheel

Although a CODING GOD, I am admittedly a mechanical weenie. So I just spent about an hour changing a wheel on my Audi cos it had a puncture on my one of my new front tyres, grrrrr. Here's what I learnt.

1. All the kit is located in under the boot/trunk floor, on either side of the spare wheel.
2. Take careful note of the layout of the stowed jack and tools, because they are impossible to put back in any other configuration - it's like a bloody chinese puzzle.
3. The Wheel is held on by 5 nuts (may be more or less on your alloys!) around a central hub. YOU ONLY HAVE TO REMOVE THE NUTS AROUND THE HUB - the rusty hub nut in the middle is not for you to touch! ;)
4. The nuts may be covered by cosmetic hexagonal covers. In the toolkit you'll find a plastic pair of tweezers which are designed to remove these covers.
5. The plastic centre cover of the wheel comes out easily by prising it out carefully with a screwdriver. Allegedly you should instead use the twisty wire thing in the toolkit to do this, but my centre cover did not have an appropriate hole to use it with!? No matter.
6. Loosen the nuts using the breaker bar in the toolkit WHEN THE WHEEL IS STILL ON THE GROUND. Jumping on your breaker bar while the car is up on the jack may end in tears.
7. After the nuts have been removed, it seemed like the wheel was still stuck on (hence me worrying about whether the centre nut had to be removed). But no, the wheel was just seized onto the rusty hub. I couldn't break the seal with my own force - instead i let the jack down and allowed the weight of the car to break the seal instead, then jacked it up again. The wheel came right off then.

2 comments:

  1. David2:36 pm

    Thanks, I have changed many wheels in the past but those plastic nut covers on the a4 had me stumped. I didn't want to use brute force (wife's car!)and am grateful for the info re tool.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for this! Me n my partner scratching our heads how to get the bloody nuts off and came across this :) owe you a big beer 🍺

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