How to Change Your Spare Tire 1998-2012 Ford Ranger

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In this video we're going to be working with our 2001 Ford Ranger. We're going to show you how to remove and replace a spare tire on the side of the road using the tools included with your vehicle. However, if you do not feel safe, or the vehicle is not in a safe location to replace the tire, please be sure to contact an emergency roadside professional.

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The only items you'll need for this repair are already in your vehicle.

Open the door to your truck. Ours is an extended cab, so we can open the back door here as well. In between the rear seats, you'll find this center console, which is actually labeled jack and handles. We'll turn the dial at the top counterclockwise and pull back and up to remove it. In order to remove the jack and equipment, we'll spin the jack all the way down with the red handle here. You have to kind of angle it and sneak it out of there. Now all of your tools in just in little plastic snap containers so go ahead and pop all of those out. We'll show you what these do in just a minute.

If your vehicle is not on level ground when you perform this procedure, you'll either want to make sure that you carry some form of chock block inside of the vehicle, or you'll find something on the side of the road. It can be a large solid stick or a rock. If the nose of the vehicle is facing downhill, you'll want to put the chock on the front. If it's facing downhill, you'll want to put it on the back. If you only have one chock available, flat ground you'll want to go on the front.

Considering we're doing the rear tire, jacking it up is going to make it more prone to roll forward, or if you can have or can find two wheel chocks, you can't go wrong placing two underneath the tire.

The end of your tire iron has this nice rubber cap flat bit, which we'll place over the indent on our center cap. Tap that in, pop it off. We'll now use our lug wrench to loosen all of the lug nuts. Ours has a wheel lock, so we'll need the key to loosen that one. You just want to crack these loose about one turn before jacking up the vehicle. Now that our lug nuts are loose, we can raise and support our vehicle.

Locate the opening for the spare tire crane underneath your tail gate and above your rear bumper. If you look in there, you'll see that there's a slot all the way at the end. This is what our tool is designed to rotate in order to lower our spare tire.

Here we have our spare tire tool kit. The items you'll see are the rod with this little spoon end on it, three identical extension rods, and the tire iron which has this square notched hole in it. You'll take the spoon end and install the joints together so they lock in. Then this end will install into the tire iron, whichever way you're more comfortable with. We'll install the spoon through that hole and into the slot we showed you a moment ago and rotate the tire iron counter-clockwise to lower the tire. Once the crane has been lowered entirely, you'll tilt the tire up on it's side, slide this retainer up over the spring portion on the end so you can lay it flat, and send it through the center bore of the tire.

Since we'll be needing to replace the tire we're changing anyway, we'll go ahead and send the crank all the way up. Once the crane is all the way up, remove the spoon tool from its slot. Since we're replacing our right rear tire, we'll install this jack under the axle, so we'll set that up right between the u-bolts on the axle. Once it gets to the point, we can't turn it by hand anymore. The same spoon tool we just used to lower the crane hooks into the bottom of the jack. We'll crank that up just until your wheel is off the ground. Now we'll leave that spoon in there just because it's a little tricky to take out and reinstall. You can now finish removing your lug nuts. Remove the wheel and tire.

Install your spare wheel and tire. Get all the lug nuts on as tight as you can by hand. Once the lug nuts are on, lower your jack. Once the jack is out from under the vehicle, you can use the hand dial on it to turn it down all the way. With the vehicle off the jack, tighten your lug nuts as tight as you can in a cross pattern, ending with the locking lug if you have one. Now since we'll have to repair our damaged tire anyway, it doesn't make sense to put it back onto the vehicle on the crane, so we'll just open our tail gate and put our damaged tire in the bed. We'll put all of our tools back, we'll push down on the tabs and disassemble the rod.

Now there is a diagram underneath where all of the rods for the tool go, but to be clear, the spoon goes closest to you, followed by the three rods that are identical. Finally, the tire iron goes all the way at the end. There's even a little notch for the upright portion. The jack slides in under this loop and sits atop all of the rods. You just hold that in there, spin it up by hand until it's tight so it stays in place. Slide the cover back in, turn the dial to the twelve o'clock position, remove your chock blocks from under your wheel and you're good to go.

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