Posts
As feared, finding a place to swap the tires and TPMS from one set of rims to the other is turning into a quest.
The chains will happily sell me new tires and sensors for the Camaro rims.
While having a complete set of spare tires mounted is handy, I don't really have a place to store them.
Never mind the additional $750 for tires and $100 for sensors. Tire store TPMS sensors are always more expensive than Rock Auto or even Amazon.
The hunt is on, because my tires have life left in them and I don't wanna kill them in storage with a false sense of security I have spares.
One particular chain store had empty bays and an empty parking lot when they turned my business away.
I looked hard at the lack of wealth generation going on and asked, "how's that turning away work doing for you?" He stammered in reply.
Welcome to the new world order of liability and lawyers. All the big tire chains and even the semi local ones with 3 or 6 branches in a 60 mile radius, won't mount old tires on rims (mine don't use the idiotic TPS transmitters but use the ABS sensors to compare rotation of all 4, if one is low that difference triggers the warning) even if they have plenty of tread and the customer is 100% OK with the tires. Everyone is ducking liability and getting sued.
ReplyDeleteI found a good ol boy in the center of a depressed town nearby that was happy for the business, but I think he is always looking over his shoulder even then. I go there every chance I get for tire related issues, gotta keep these folks alive. I guess I could add a tire machine to my barn shop, but that is a lot of scratch for something used once every 4 to 10 years.
If you were in S. Texas, I'd advise going to a Mexican place painted yellow with red writing on the building.
ReplyDeleteThey'll do anything sketchy.
Had an old storage trailer the boss didn't want to upgrade rims on that needed 3(of 8) split rim tires repaired.
None of the big shops would get any closer than seeing that ring before they noped out- wouldn't even let me use their air to air them up. Then I found an old Mexican tire shop who said they'd fix them.
I had to walk around the corner when they were airing them up -two old Mexicans leaning over a split rim on the ground as they were airing it up- just so when it blew, I'd be able to say "I was around the corner and didn't see a thing."
Lucky for me I've got a few "hole in the wall" kind of tire places I've found in the area that will happily do any kind of mounting, balancing, repairs, etc., even if they didn't sell the tires. And they don't even charge unreasonable prices. I'm having to improve my mostly no bueno Espanol to work with them though. I also had some tire racks made for the back yard and I cover the tires with tarps to protect them from the elements. It's not as good as storing them indoors but better than just leaving them completely unprotected.
ReplyDelete-swj