Experts required - can you help out here?
https://www.reviewgeek.com/46029/nasa-needs-you-to-help-teach-the-mars-rover-some-safe-driving-skills/
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Are the punctures mostly in the tread or the sidewall? If in the sidewall, you are indeed running into stuff on the verge which will tear a sidewall. The tread areas of modern tyres are incredibly tough.
I used to carry a can of sealing foam in my TVR and no spare. If that’s how an Aston Martin comes, why not my Tiv? Tho’ mine was not cossetted in a plush-lined mahogany box, in its own cubby hole in the boot.
I came out one morning to find all 4 tyres flat. There was a small hole in the top of each sidewall: some rat-fink had, for psychological reasons known only to himself and his shrink, punctured all 4 with a drill. Envy vandalism? I once saw a guy walk past a cafe I was in and rip the mirror off a Porche …
When you get tyres renewed you must ask the fitter not to set his airgun on max. They - especially the younger ones - generally do this . It saves them having to look up the correct torque for the nuts.
Case in point - I was once stuck with a Range Rover with a flat on Strand, London WC2. The spider supplied would not budge the nuts. I borrowed a 2m scaffold pole from a nearby building site. The result was I folded up the spider without the nut moving a mm.
Jacking up is also an issue for those with less strength. Scissor jacks are dismal objects. They take a deal of effort as the weight comes on them, The leverage of the winder is usually inadequately short. They are also a great deal less stable than …
The answer is to bin the scissor jack and get a 2 tonne bottle jack. [2 tonne the lifting capacity, not the weight of the jack!]. Jacking up with this is effortless. You simply pump up and down and the vehicle rises gracefully into the air. I have run a number of 3.5 tonne vans over the years and the right capacity bottle jack with lift a loaded van with no effort.
A trick with the bottle jack is to carry a stout piece of timber, say twice the area of the base of the jack. If your timber is the right thickness, putting the jack on it at the jacking position will leave nary a wee bit of jacking before the vehicle starts to lift. Bottle jacks do have a screw-out section to get the head close to the jacking point before you start pumping but to my mind you want as little extension on the column as poss, for maximum stability.
If your jacking point is just a flat piece of steel, with no recess to take the head of a jack, a wooden pad on the head of the jack will prevent any risk of slipping if there’s any angle to the column as the car rises. Some cars with very long suspension travel need the car jacked up a long way before there’s enough clearance to fit a fully inflated spare.
Or get a Citroen with hydropneumatic suspension. The car will lift the duff wheel off the ground, all by itself.
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and Lotus did the same on the Elise where the can of sealing foam also doubled as the bonnet support to keep the weight down.
And ended up with rubbery stuff all over everything!
A motoring journo taking an Elise for a blast asked the accompanying Lotus man why they had made the handling of the Elise so incredibly precise.
“So the Elise driver can dodge the TVR coming at him at insane speed, on the wrong side of the road”
A woman wrote an account for the TVRCC mag of her husband’s w/e with a Cerbera, on loan from a TVR dealer. At the time and maybe still, the Cerbera [top speed 186 mph] was the world’s fastest car with baby-seat anchor points. TVR boss Peter Whitehead was on family #2 with wife #2.
“Can my husband be trusted with a TVR Cerbera?” Conclusion of article: No.
An embarrasing number of insurance claims by TVR drivers involve no other vehicle.
But then, we know what Lotus stands for, dont we? Lots Of Trouble: Usually Serious.
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Only the cowboys put them on that tight. They do so because they know the wheelnuts won’t be checked after 100 kms or so as they should be.
Wheelnuts, generally, should only torqued up to something equivalent to a grown man pulling on the wheelbrace supplied with the car.
A tip to help cope with the cowboys is to keep a length of suitable diameter pipe in the car, this can be slipped over the wheelbrace and trodden on to help undo the wheelnut.
Back to the original point, in 20 plus years of living here Only had a couple of punctures, both of which were due to builders leaving nails/screws in the road after they had “cleared up”.
Not a good idea to release the nuts and retighten with the vehicle wrench, buy a cheap torque wrench and then retighten them… Your tight and mine are different, i can exceed 100ft/lb with a car wrench, others can’t make 60… ONLY a torque wrench will guarantee the correct force.
Soft or hard tyres won’t avoid a nail… Soft might ride it, hard might get the puncture.
Good idea to lube the threads, and with alloy wheels, to lube the boss where the wheel seats, steel boss and alloy are a prime for corrosion and making removal difficult sometimes.
do not use a tyre shop or garage that does not use a torque wrench!!.. it’s industry standard for year now…
if they’re going to wrench your nuts with an airgun, they’re likely not to do a good job on the tyre swap, repair or balance?
My Transit has a locating hole in the scissor jack, when i buried it in soft ground last month, i was able to scrape away enough muck to get a plank and jack in position, jack it up, add blocks under the wheel, take another plank, and raised the van more, and was able to drive away… My bottle jack wouldn’t go near… and with the locating hole, the scissor jack was secure, fair do’s, it does take some effort to wind it, but it works.
My new car has a recess on the joint of body panels, only the supplied scissor fits and is stable, other wise, the dish head of a trolley jack… the little head of a bottle jack is useless on the car or transit.
Pulling up works better than pushing down.
The great thing about a telescopic wrench is that you release the nuts with it fully extended and tighten with it closed.
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far too technical Mike. Much surely depends on which side of the nut you are applying the pressure to 
The nuts on my wheels have two sides and six flats, but that is irrelevant.
You turn them anti-clockwise to release and clockwise to tighten.
The greatest leverage is obtained when the bar is more or less horizontal.
I don’t have the strength to do things the hard way!
But you can push down much easier if you stand on it, can’t do that upwards, probably…
Depends on your body weight. And it carries a degree of risk that could land you in hospital. Not recommended!
It’s true that if clearance is tight a folded scissor jack will get under a space a bottle jack will not.
But with suitable bits of timber to hand, I have never found it impossible or unsafe to jack up any vehicle with a bottle jack. The plain head on the Halford’s ones, for example, really do need some additional ‘padding’.
The effort to get a scissor jack lifting, once the weight has come on, may well be beyond many women. Maybe someone 
with experience can comment
I replaced the pathetic cranked rod of the g/f’s jack with a ratchet socket driver, socket and extn bar. The same kit worked for her nuts, as well …
“… wrench your nuts with an airgun” All tyre shops use air nut drivers. They are adjustable for torque and should be set to suit the vehicle. The problem is they rarely are. Set at max - boom. Simple laziness. That has no bearing on the job they do on any other aspect of tyre work, in my experience.
In fact I had never realised that grot accumulating between a rim and a sidewall can lead to slow leaks. The Kwik-Fit fitter did, cleaned up all 4 rims, replaced the tyres, refitted with air spanner 
and all was perfectly well.
I then slacked off the nuts with an extension bar and did them up again to sensible torque - a procedure I always do, before I may be caught out unable to shift a mega-tight nut.
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a g/f with nuts - wow! 
My kinda girl!!
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OK Graham,
Exhibit A! Taking an inner tube for a punture test in the South China Sea.
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Have to admit getting a scissor jack moving can be a test of strength and patience!!..
but with a flattie, it’s difficult getting a workshop 2tonne trolley under many vehicles.
as an apprentice mechanic, back in the days of Austin 1100’s, i had to lift them on a ramp, take the wheels off and underseal the vehicles, one time i had replaced the wheels and a few days later had reports the wheel had loosened, this was 1970… i got a lot of earache for not doing the nuts tight, but was defended by another mech, saying i was not qualified or strong enough to do wheel nuts at 16yrs old…
from then on, every wheel not had a torque wrench on them!
Removing truck wheels on the road side is a challenge, but when corroded to the hub, it took ages with a sledge hammer to knock them off, ad damage the wheel in the process…
so every hub gets a scrub and drop of lube…
my air wrench of old, is stop and go. break bolt tight or not at all, yes the latest nut runner {electric] are good… but a good tech will always run up to tight, then torque to final force?
6 weekly service on an 18wheeler, to check tighten all wheel nuts with torque wrench… 180 wheel nuts checked to 600n/m…
old truck wheel nuts with cone, were “crack tight”… if they didn’t crack, they weren’t tight… until someone used the same test on spigot nuts… by #5, they realised it was breaking the attached washers!!
in dire straights, i have used bottle jacks to lift a truck… just one side, then used axle stand…
True what you say to have a bit of gas pipe with the wheel kit on a car, if you have space… or one of the sliding tube wheel wrenches out there now.
i’ve done my 45 yrs on cars and trucks… but still get mucky when someone asks for help.
Mike,
You are right. But my other half finds it easier to tread on the extended wrench as she doesn’t have enough body strength/mass to be able to free the wheel nuts by pulling upwards.
Grahame.
Grahame Pigney
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The problem with jumping on the wrench is that you are not holding it firmly on the bolt (actually bolts on my car, do some use nuts?) so it could slip off with unpredictable outcome. Recommend she calls out a man.
Mike,
Nobody said “jump” on the wrench. What I said was treading on the wrench, “jumping” on the wrench risks injuries to the person.
Why should people (regardless of their gender) have to call out a “man”?
Grahame Pigney
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