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 ?
This is not a scam, it’s a reaction to lawsuits.
How to get around it?
Order your tires from for example tire rack, go to local service station (yes, there may be one in your area), and have them mount the tires. If needed, change out the old ones yourself, (or have the service station do it).
Find your size, and search (lowest price first) and buy online Walmart and have a local place balance and mount them or find a Walmart Auto Service.
Big Wally has a choice, he can screw you or bend over to be screwed REALLY BIG TIME by shyster lawyers and unelected, unaccountable, Government Bureaucrats.
Find a used tire store and buy a pair of tires. Those guys don’t usually ask questions. I’ve been doing that on my 2004 Dodge Cummins 2500 4x4, that I only used for hauling about 4 tons a hay a month with during the summer.
We use Discount Tire or the dealer. Frau advises we were never required to buy a tire beyond the one that was damaged. Though we often did.
(OT: Radial tire pull is a manufacturing issue I was unaware of until recently.)
Ditch the kid and all his many problems.
He’s old enough to ruin tires he’s old enough to make it on his own.
“Shave the tire”? Really? I guess that’s out of my league.
I agree that it is a reaction to lawsuits, however it is still a scam because people who do not need 4 tires are told that they do. And as as pointed out you could get a tire shaved to a matching depth. And sure if you are not hundreds of miles from home you can mail order tires, but that is not always the case.
Insurance. They are just followed by orders.
I have wondered. If you buy all 4 tires from them under their rules if 1 tire has to be replaced under warranty, are they required to replace all 4 at their cost.
I would pull the ones that need replacement off and carry them down to the tire store.
But yes, you can tear expensive parts up running two different size tires on a 4wd/awd.
I just looked up “Shave the tire” in the urban dictionary fortunately it is not listed as some kind of strange thing.
Annoying. And the screw threads in the plastic grill (which
needed to be completely disassembled in the headlight
replacement process) were almost totally stripped - barely
enough left to hold the screws - and therefore the headlights - in.
But a decent truck otherwise.
I wish your kid good luck with it.
‘bun out’ = ‘burn out’
Here is a temp fix for plastic screw holes that are stripped out. Put a drop or two of superglue or epoxy in there and let dry. Likely will have to force the screw in but will often hold a while longer.
Ran into similar lawyer bullshiite recently. Previous owner of my 4Runner had pu larger than stock tires on. Had a slow leak and asked Discount tire to fix when getting a new spare tire.
They would not touch it as it was on a rim 0.5” under spec for that tire size.
They were the dealer that had installed the tires several years earlier. I just wanted a freaking leak fixed, not mount a tire.
Bring a “loose” rim or tire and rim assy to the tire store.
Buy a new tire and have it mounted on the rim.
Retrieve the new tire on rim and install it on the vehicle in question yourself elsewhere.
I have a Subaru, and have been told this by a variety of sources. I think it is a real thing for Subarus at least, because there are even services where you can ship a tire to, and for a fee they “shave the tire” to more closely match your other three. I have also heard you need to have the same make and model of tire to replace it, though I can say that I don’t think that is true.
Now, my wife and I were down In Virginia some years back on a long road trip, and were driving over to Williamsburg from Washington DC. We came to a stop at an intersection, and I heard a hissing noise...this was inside the car, mind you.
Puzzled, my wife said that she heard it too, and I listened carefully. Yes. A soft, steady hissing. There was no car behind me, so I got out and did a walk around, and heard the hissing emanating from my left rear tire. There it was. A large piece of metal protruding from the tire, but...the tire still had air in it, it wasn’t escaping fast. I figured I had just enough time to make for a parking lot across the street in a strip mall where I could safely change the tire without worrying about getting squashed by a vehicle. I made it over with air to spare, and no additional damage to the tire.
I couldn’t believe the tire held pressure even that long. The strip of metal protruding was about an inch wide, four inches long, and a quarter of an inch thick. I threw the donut spare on, and drove to a tire place to get the tire repaired, as we were about 800 miles from home where I had had the tires replaced a few months back. The tire place said it couldn’t be repaired, the damaged hole was too large to plug, and I would have to purchase a new one.
He also told me that he did not carry those tires. They were some brand (maybe Hankook?) that I had never heard of, but a couple of people I trusted told me were really good for the money, so I had gotten four of them, but...they didn’t sell them in Virginia that I could tell. I did find a dealer in Richmond who had them though, amazingly which as I recall was something like 70 miles away, so...off we went the next morning from the motel doing 45 mph the whole way which I am sure pissed off people during that rush hour even though I was in the right hand lane with my blinkers on.
We figured we had to do this since we weren’t even a quarter of the way done with our trip, so...we made the drive to Richmond.
Well, when we got there, the place absolutely did not have the make or the model. I was pretty pissed, and the guy couldn’t figure out who told us they had the tire, so he suggested we get a cheap tire that was almost like the ones we had, we could finish the trip with that, and when we went back home, we could get a matching tire from the tire place I had purchased them from. He knew a woman who ran a tire place that had a lot of un-matched tires left over, so...we went there.
She was great. I wrote her a letter later. But she found me an inexpensive tire that she thought wouldn’t damage the car, and even mounted it for free. It served us well.
When I got home, I went to the tire place, and even though it was a large chain, it had been purchased in the interim by another large chain, and the manager said he wouldn’t honor the damage policy I had paid for.
I got pretty hot, I can tell you, and I poured out every conservative argument and customer service argument that came to my tongue, and he agreed to give me a tire at half price (not a free replacement) I took that and never went back.
Just bought 1 used tire for my 2019 Stelvio. I’m trading it in in November. Was not buying a new set or a new one. Paid $40 all in. No brainer...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.