Posted on 08/04/2022 2:36:25 PM PDT by algore
My kid had rear Tire blow up on his 96 ranger xlt in middle of nowhere, and in another state far from me today.
I told him I would try to find some tires for him and would call him back.
called a big wally center, and a place with discounted tires as well as a good-month place and asked for a quote on 2 tires. (I had replaced the front 2 a few months ago)
each of them asked me if it was 4wd and when I said yes they told me they had to replace all 4 tires or they would not take my money.
I understand that on a few types of higher end AWD cars Audi, Bmw etc you should keep the diameter on each tire decently close, but the blanket policy these stores seem to have is annoying.
My x-gf was told this same thing on her new rav-4 hybrid when she had 4000 total miles on the car. The discounted tire place told her they would not sell her only one tire unless she threw it in her trunk unmounted. (her hybrid does not care about tire diameter as the front and rear are driven separately)
Kids Ranger does not care about this at all, not even if he got out and locked the hubs.
This is such a real concern on some cars, and if these tire places cared about their customers they should have a reference guide which listed cars this could actually be an issue with and then give an option to shave the tire to a proper matching depth instead of just insisting you need 4 new tires regardless of logic.
I wonder how many people have been AWD scammed ?
Walmart will mount tires, as will Les Schwab. Just bring in the wheel, and buy or bring a tire with you.
I had Schwab tell me once that I had to purchase 4 studded tires for my front wheel driven van. I went home, brought them two dismounted wheels and bought two studded tires.
I had a kind of worn tire that I needed fixing. Was told it’s too old/worn.
I had brought it in on the rim and said, “its for my farm trailer” OK, fix it, its for his farm trailer.
Also, the DOT stands for Department of Transportation. And the collection of numbers following it used to be referred to as the “dot” numbers.
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