The inner workings of a car are pretty scary. There is a mess of tubes, wires and metal bits; who knows what will happen if you start messing with those, right?
On a new car — say one built in the past 10 years — I’m inclined to agree with that. There is a lot going on, and you need special tools to figure out what is wrong, let alone fix something. Older cars though, anyone can fix. Lucky for owners of new and old cars alike, these two simple jobs can be done on cars of any age.

Rotating your Tires

All the tools required for this are probably in the trunk of your car, and your owner’s manual will tell you which tire goes where. If you don’t have an owner’s manual, you will likely be able to find a .pdf version on the Internet.

Rotating your tires is important, as it ensures each tire wears evenly. If you have a car with all wheel drive, this is especially important, as uneven tires can damage a centre differential.

The process of removing a tire is pretty simple:

Make sure the car is in park (or in gear for a manual car), and the handbrake is firmly engaged.

Find the jack point on the underside of the body (this will also be outlined in your owner’s manual).

Jack the car up until you can see some weight come off the tire you want to remove. Don’t jack the car up all the way though or the wheel will just spin when you try to remove the bolts.

Unbolt the wheel and remove, replacing it with the spare (otherwise you’ll always have one corner of the car on the ground, and that’s not good). When replacing the bolts it is important to get the torque right. Too much and the bold will be stuck, too little and it might fall off while driving. The rule of thumb I use is “torque it as much as you can with two hands, without putting your weight on the wrench.”

Lower the car and move on to the next wheel in the rotation sequence outlined by your owner’s manual.

Remove that wheel following the steps above, and replace it with the first wheel you took off.

Repeat until all wheels have been moved.

Changing Sparkplugs

Unlike rotating your tires, changing your car’s sparkplugs does require a special tool. A ratchet-type wrench and a socket designed to fit your car’s plugs will be needed. In terms of effort, though, changing plugs is much easier.

Sparkplugs ignite the fuel in the cylinders; old or dirty plugs don’t work as efficiently and could lead to bad fuel economy and unburned fuel in the exhaust gasses.

Go to your local automotive store and buy plugs. If you’re not sure which ones to buy, ask the person at the counter. They’ll know.

Start by opening your hood. If you have a newer car there might be a bit of plastic covering the business side of the engine. This should be easy to remove.
There should be one wire for each of your pistons (so four for a four cylinder, six for a V6, etc.) running from the firewall to the top of your engine; each will likely end in a rubber plug on the top of the engine.

Grab the rubber plug at the engine and pull up firmly.

If you can see the top of the sparkplug, great! If not, don’t worry, it’s in there, and as long as you have a long enough extension you should be able to get at it no problem.

Using the wrench, place the socket firmly over the plug and rotate it counter clockwise. The rubber stopper in the sparkplug socket will make sure the plug is gripped firmly, so you can remove it from the hole.

Once you have extracted the plug, examine its electrode (the business end of the plug). If it looks like clean fresh metal, then it’s probably OK and can go back in for a few thousand more kilometres. If the electrode is brown, white or black, you should replace all the plugs.

When putting the new plug in, it is very important to tighten it by hand at first. If you strip the threads it could get stuck or damage the engine’s head; both are bad news. Once the plug is properly seated (when you can’t screw it in any farther by hand) use the wrench to lightly tighten it about 1/4 to 1/2 a turn farther.

Replace the plug wire and move onto the next plug. Don’t try to remove all the wires at once; if you mix up the order they go in, you’ll cause a misfire and could hurt your engine.

So there you have it: two simple jobs. Master these and you’ll be ready for more complex jobs, such as changing alternators and adjusting valve clearances!
Good wrenching!