Tyre Joker

[Hertz]

As has been said throughout, your "top" names are only interested in selling you a brand new tyre rather than a few quid here and there. Doesn't make sense when they are paying for all the staff in the place that might be slack for an hour here and there.

 

Take it to a part worn place they will fit them no probs.

[MarvinsMom]

one saturday when i had a company hack i had the miss fortune to have to go to Kwikshit in Darlo' to get a flat replaced, and without every punter that came in needed 2, 3 or 4 new tyres.

 

Robbin' bastards, i dunno how some folk can sleep at night. 

 

in complete contrast, we take our cars to an independent that SWMBO once worked with, before he set up in business for himself, and without exception he has been nothing but helpful and got us sorted out. but then, he knows i have 4 cars, SWMBO has 2 cars and a bike, and then there is SWMBO father and brother, both of whom have cars. so that is quite a number of MOT's and tyres which we can require over, say a year.......

[tooSavvy]

 It is advised that a tyre that has been repaired with sealant is then scrap, but we tend to repair when possible. makes a hell of a mess though, and don't,whatever you do, get it in your eye......

 

I have heard tell that tyre places do, as you say, skip the tyre but also swear about all the $hite gunge, now sticking to the wheel well too...??

 

Have they got to 'clean it off'.

 

TS

[Cavcraft]

Ring them up next week, book a full service, then ten minutes before you're due to go in ring them up and say that you want to see receipts for the oil and service parts because lots of garages are being broken into.

 

If they do show you receipts, just tell them you didn't know the parts were that cheap, so you'll do it yourself now.

[mat_the_cat]

A couple of years ago round here there was a choice of two places. One of them refused outright to fit tyres I supplied (despite having done it before), and the other was an independent petrol station where the owner will fit tyres on the side. I asked for a price for supply & fit, but he wasn't interested in supplying anything other than the cheapo brands. So I asked for a price for fitting only, and said to add on a few quid to make up for the lack of profit on the tyres.

 

He gave me a price of £50 which seemed fair, so I dropped off 8 wheels (had the misfortune to need a set for two vehicles at the same time!), and said I could pay on collection. Only for the price to have jumped to £80, apparently because I "was doing him out of any money he'd make on the tyres". FFS.

 

Now there's a local bloke who works out of a van - he charges £30 for fitting 4 or free if I do a spot of work for him. And he now (thanks to my suggestion) is a fan of tyreleader.co.uk!

[Lord Sterling]

I've supplied tyres to my local tyre monkeys who do a great job. In fact, after trying a few other places I went back to him as he always does a great job. Never had any complaints. Though a couple of times he hasn't had the tyre sizes I needed.

[warren t claim]

I've had Costco refuse to put new tyres on the front before because of some bizarre reason that only made sense to them.

[twosmoke300]

I fit tyres that the customers supply no worries. Don't usually get a receipt mind .

[Pillock]

Are Costco good for tyres? I can't understand the bizarre twist in business logic - massive tubs of KP Nuts, carton of shampoo, two Goodyear tyres fitted - but the prices seem competitive.

[Albert Ross]

It's all academic. I fit anything in my spare time at work. Because I have large tyres, big balance weights are like gold dust.. so I tend to dredge through the removed ones and clean them up. I have quite a collection of them now. I sometimes nip in on my days off and swap about 500kg of tyres and wheels around. It keeps me fit, whilst others laugh at me. 9.00x16s and reverse rims with HD tubes take some fitting.... I get a proper dab on. Because I use tubes, I don't use valves belonging to the company either, just the equipment. Some places refuse to fit tubes, and when I had bolted split rims, I had someone refuse to fit tyres to them..... because it was illegal to use them on the road... really.

[r.welfare]

Costco run a video on continuous loop showing that you'll get killer oversteer if you don't put your new tyres on the rear. Seems like sensationalist BS to me.

[Albert Ross]

No, that bit is actually closer to the truth than you would realise. I know this is a Stateside production, and the examples are all over the place.. BMW, Granada etc, but, the message is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSz7cm6MwH0

[Cavcraft]

To be fair, the trusty manager of my local ATS told me years back rear tyres blowing out cause more danger than fronts. I've know the bloke for years and he has never tried to have anyone off or lie.

[The Moog]

Is there a way to check Costco tyre prices online?

[Barry Cade]

I was in Costco a few weeks back, and there were no prices that raised an eyebrow. No real savings from normal tyre places.

[r.welfare]

About once a year they do buy 3 get 1 free or buy 2 get 2 free, it's worthwhile then. Also you don't have to have all four fitted there and then, you can come back and get the remainder fitted at a later point. They don't do tracking though.

[fordperv]

I always go to a part worn place I've known for years to have tyres swapped over etc the gaffer let's me jack any cars up that I take in because he knows I'm a fussy bugger at where they get jacked up

[mat_the_cat]

/\ Same here! Ever since a fitter bent the sill lip on my BX many years ago (breaking the factory sealant) I've always either jacked up outside, or done it at home and brought the wheels in by themselves.

[New POD]

 A few weeks later a valve went on my other halfs 807. (They have tyre pressure monitors and one bent and started to leak) We limped it to the nearest kwik fit before it went down and asked them to stick a normal valve in it. Another bunch of twats that can't possibly do that just in case nuns and kittens might die. Luckily it wasn't losing too much and we got it back to the independent who done it straight away and explained that the light would be on but othewise it is perfectly safe.

 

IF, the car had run flats on, then the monitoring of tyre pressures is essential, because if you don't, the average owner wouldn't know that they had a puncture, and would be driving at high speed with no pressure.  Given that the run flats are designed to run for only 100 km at a max of 50 KPH, fitting them to a car without pressure monitoring could be VERY dangerous, especially if you picked up a puncture at the start of a long journey.

Not all cars with tyre pressure monitors have run flats, but all cars with Run Flats will have some sort of pressure monitoring

So having a blanket "Protect our arse" policy for a company like KwiKtit with the sort of brilliant academics they employ, is probably to be expected.  

I would expect a decent discussion with the boss of the independent, and I'd still expect a reluctance to fit a normal valve to a run flat tyre.  

 

Note that cheap cars, like my wife's Generation 1 Bini, use the wheel speed sensors to decide if one wheel is travelling a shorter distance than the others, and have a normal valve. But cheap owners like me, fit normal tyres as they are cheaper.

[New POD]

Is there a way to check Costco tyre prices online?

 

Ring up ask to speak to tyre dept. Only cheaper when you want top of the range, you want 4 and they have a buy 4 get 10% off deal on. BUT they do know how to use a torque wrench.

[Pillock]

I thought most cars use the ABS wheel speed sensor to detect tyre circumference rather than shit wireless senders. My Focus did, although that managed NOT to warn me of a flat, and then keep warning me of a flat once I'd had it sorted and reset the system. A bit bum-clenching to get that message pop up in the outside lane of the M5.

 

My Astra actually shows me pressures for each tyre on the dash. I assume this is done with wizardry.

[Albert Ross]

Extremely expensive valves..... nothing to do with ABS. Any issues there bring all sorts of fault lights on.

[twosmoke300]

Bmw and mini deffo use the wheel speed sensors for tyre pressure monitoring

[New POD]

Bmw and mini deffo use the wheel speed sensors for tyre pressure monitoring

 

Indeed they do.  They reckon it can spot a 5 psi change.

[Pillock]

Extremely expensive valves..... nothing to do with ABS. Any issues there bring all sorts of fault lights on.

Aaah. As with all complicated sounding stuff on this car, rather glad it's not mine. Do they get changed on a tyre change like regular valves?

 

I assume that's why some cars have a TPS reset button (Focus, my Pug 2008 did) because they work on speed sensors, and some don't because they read actual values.

[Albert Ross]

The expensive valves stay in the wheel. They come in a kit of parts, and each is uniquely coded to position on the relevant vehicle. Renault get titsy if the wheel goes out of range of the ECU, and may need resetting at a dealer if that happens!

[Pillock]

An ingenious solution to a problem that never really existed.

 

Well, not until they started making spare wheels a £95 option anyway.

[Albert Ross]

All for weight saving..... apparently. So manufacturers can cram in 200kg of extra copper, to serve as a "lights on" warning, and not forgetting Climate Control, massive alloys with superwide tyres, all absolute necessities for onward travel..... I'm already getting FB reports of SNOKAOS all over the place. Avoid Lincoln particularly, as people there have forgotten that hills are more slippery with snow on....... of course, were I to be travelling through Lincoln tonight, I would have tried every hill personally.....

[HH-R]

The only tyre pressure warning system I've got is being shoved into Armco at 70 MPH if one bursts.

[Hendry]

This TPMS caper is utterly wank, we have a 64 plate Insignia SRi Tourer at work, its not even 4 months old, and has been in the dealers for 2 of those due to the TPMS. It came back from one customer who had hired it with a message coming up on the dash every time the car is started saying "TPMS fault" now this can be dismissed by pressing the "tick" button on the steering wheel audio/board computer controls but the icon of the car from above shows with the values for the tyre pressures shown so I think both fronts showed 35 psi and the OSR showed 37 psi but the NSR just showed -- psi so clearly an issue with the NSR. Personally I'd just have left it because we checked the tyre, no cuts, no tears or punctures and showing 37psi also, the local ATS checked it and said the tyre was perfect, the car has now done less than 500miles in total, so it went to Vauxhall who fitted a new sensor/valve and reset system, this didn't fix the issue, so they contacted Vauxhalls technical dept who said OK go ahead and replace the TPMS ECU, this didn't fix it either so Technical dept said they'd send a field engineer out, he said to replace something else, still no joy, everytime we call for an update the say they've tried something else and the fault message is still there, field engineer has been in again and said to replace another part and that hasnt worked either, basically a dealer workshop full of Tech's, plus Vauxhalls own Tech dept down at Luton or Ellesmere Port haven't a clue either. I've never heard so much bother with other "fancy gizmos" on cars as I have with TPMS. I remember briefly working in an Arnie Clark Renault dealership when the Laguna IIs had only been out 2 years, one came in needing new front tyres and the customer had told the service reception that Shit-Fit etc wouldn't touch the car just in case they messed up the TPMS valves and were liable for them, and to get Renault do to it then at least if they messed it up they would renew the valves under warranty, as it was the tyres were changed and the wheels refitted and the diagram on the dash was flashing where the front wheels should be, the car thought the wheels were still off the car/missing.