Tools for Tire-Changers

Tire-changers are highly specialized professionals who work in high-pressure race situations for sports like NASCAR and Formula 1. Tire-changers are charged with stripping all four wheels from a car and replacing them with new ones in fewer than 15 seconds. The traditional and time-consuming manual-jack-and-lug-wrench combination is completely useless in such situations. As a result, professional tire-changers have developed a handful of unique tools and solutions to maximize their job performance.

  1. Hydraulic Jack

    • A 20-pound hydraulic jack is an important tool for a professional pit team. When changing car tires during a race, professional tire-changers need to lift the car off the ground to ensure a quick and friction-free process. Hydraulic jacks exploit the principles of physics by placing liquid in a pair of airtight cylinders. When pressure is applied to the liquid, the cylinders perform a quick, upward thrust strong enough to lift and a hold a car in place while tire-changers swap-out the wheels.

    Air-Powered Impact Wrench

    • The tire-changer's most important tool is the air-powered impact wrench, which employs a relatively simple technology: lock too much air into too small a space. This air compression builds a tremendous pressure that, when released with a piston, creates a powerful burst of energy. An air-powered impact wrench latches onto the lug nuts of a wheel and, with one burst of compressed air, has enough torque to strip the nut quickly. A single burst is also powerful enough to fasten a new wheel's lug nuts to the car. Thus, an air-powered impact wrench greatly reduces the time and manual labor required to change a tire.

    Lubricants

    • Due to the extremely limited time frame allotted for changing tires, professional tire-changers use lubricants to make sure a tire's lug nuts don't get lodged in the nozzle of an air-powered impact wrench. The same Teflon that is used on nonstick frying pans is used on the lug nuts of a race car to create a slick surface that will fall quickly and easily from the nozzle of a wrench. Some professional tire-changers also use a graphite spray to coat the inside of an impact wrench as extra insurance.