How to Install Spare Tire 2005-15 Toyota RAV4

What's up guys? I'm Andy from 1AAuto. In this video I'm going to show you how to install the spare tire on this 2010 Toyota Rav4. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

Now on the backside of this cover, there's a zipper right here. If the zipper is way down there, you're going to want to grab the cover and try to twist it a little bit. Although it's not really that easy, but try to grab the zipper. Unzip the zipper. With that unzipped, you should be able to peel back this part of the cover a little bit.

Just grab the cover, grab from underneath it, slide it out from the tire, just work it back and forth. Eventually we're going to pull this off just like that. There's the cover. We're going to have to take these nuts off right here. There's three of them, so we're going to use the tool that comes with the car. Open the cargo gate, and there's no tools. Oh there's tools. Grab these tools right here so we can pull these tools out. And this is the tool we're going to use. And loosen these up. I don't think these have ever been off. They're actually pretty difficult to remove. Keep in mind there is a tire pressure sensor in there so you're going to want to make sure you always keep pressure in here. You could have a tire light come on on the dash and you check all four tires and they're fine, and it could be this tire that's giving you the check tire pressure light. Take those all off.

Now, I can grab the tire and just slide it off. Now to remove the jack, go in here, you're going to have to loosen up on the top part because it's stuck in there. I might actually have to use this tool. Loosen this here, so if that's too tight, just take this part of the tool, the hook part, slide it in there and you should be able to twist it. You can also use a small pocket screwdriver if you have to loosen this up if it's too tight. It's a good idea to keep one of those in your car, and then you can slide the jack out.

All right, so now we're going to use this jack right here. I'm going to replace this rear tire but there's different jack points on this pinch weld so you're going to have to look for those and you can also check your owner's manual for the specific spot. There's a little picture on the actual jack. So you can do this by hand and make sure you're on a level surface and you don't want to be in the dirt when you're doing this. You want to make sure you're on something solid.

Line this up. There's a little slot in the jack. Then we can take this bar. This is going to go here and then use this tool and we can twist this up and the vehicle is going to raise up a little bit. Before I get the tire off the ground I am going to break those lug nuts free. So tire still in the ground. It's a good idea to make sure you set your parking brake as well because you don't want the vehicle to roll, and also it's a good idea to chuck the wheels from moving, the wheels that are going to stay on the ground. Get a piece of wood, put one on the front, one on the back. That'll keep it from rolling by accident.

Now we're going to loosen these lug nuts up. Just take the lug wrench, loosen them up. I always push down towards the ground versus pulling up, because when you're pulling up you can hurt your back and stuff so it's always a better idea to just push down when you're loosening. And those are all loose. Now we can raise the vehicle.

So that's high up enough. Now I can remove the tire. Let's take all those lug nuts off. And hopefully this doesn't happen. Ah, tire's on there pretty good. There we go, give it a good hit. Be careful because you don't want the car to fall while you're doing that. You can always put one lug nut on and then try to hit it on the backside with a hammer. I'm going to take this tire and we'll just slide it under the car right there, so that way if the jack fails or anything, the car's not just going to go straight to the ground. It'll give you a little bit of protection.

Take this spare tire, just slide it over the lugs and put the nuts on. We'll take the tire iron and just snug these up a little bit. Now I'm going to pull this tire out of there. Lower this jack down a little bit just so that that tire is actually just touching the ground. Now we'll take the tire iron, now you're not going to have a torque wrench if you're out on the side of the road so do the best you can. Just tighten these up in a star pattern. You don't want to tighten them as tight as you can tighten them, but pretty, pretty tight. You don't want them falling off, so make sure it's in a star pattern so that it tightens the wheel down evenly.

There you go. And you can lower the jack the rest of the way. All right, there we go. Now take the tire. You want to line it up with the lugs right there. Now if you were taking one of the wheels off the car, you're going to want to take the center cap off and the steel wheels fit on here. I'm not sure if the aluminum wheels would fit on there, but this one has all steel wheels. Take these lug nuts. Re-install these. Just take this tire iron, snug these up, and that's good. And then we can put the cover back on.

So the backside, we want the zipper part at the top of the tire and the sewn part at the bottom. So just slide the bottom part in first. Just try to pull this over. Just like that. You can actually open the tailgate and then you can grab it from the bottom and try to slip it on a little bit more. Push that over. Now this zipper is a little bit messed up on this one, but normally the zipper is out there. Once that's in position, it's pretty good. Make sure that bottom's around the tire. Now we can take this part, and start zipping it. That's what holds the tire cover on, is the zipper, obviously not this one. This one's not too good, but hopefully yours is better. There you go. That's good. So you want to fold the jack down like that. Slide it in position. And that's in position. Then we'll just tighten this up and just snug that up. It should be good.

So take the cover with the vent side towards the bottom. These two little tabs go towards the front of the vehicle and then you just latch that in place like that. Then we'll take the jack tools, slide them back into the bag, and then the tow hook is in here also, if you ever need the tow hook to tow the vehicle, you can get that out of the bag. Slide the bag back in position there. There's no hook or anything that holds this one down. And then slide this vent side down. Two tabs, lock it in place.

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