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If you still have rubber valve stems on your car that were purchased during this period, have them inspected and replaced. You have to have the tires deflated and dismounted for the technician to find the identification number on the stem. Sears stems have a stock numbers that are listed in their customer safety notice which is online.

If I'm not mistaken, the valve stems can be replaced without dismounting the tire. I think that I'd skip the dismounting and just replace the stems if I had any concerns about the possibility of having them in my wheels.

Bob you are correct. It is not difficult to change a valve stem. You don't necessarily have to completely dismount a tire to change one. To illustrate I found a video of a defective Chinese valve stem being replaced on a scooter without dismounting the tire or even having the proper tools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBikGAIzArM

WestSylvanian my statements here were never intended to say that there are not defective Chinese valve stems out there, only that I have not had any more difficulty with valve stems in recent years despite most of them now being made in China. I think it is great that this issue has been brought up. When someone checks their tire pressure they should also take a look at their tire and valve stem condition.

Also if you find that one tire is much lower than the rest you should try to discover why. In my experience most slow leaks are from a nail or some other item that has caused a small hole. Often the nail will be found before the head has been worn off. In most cases if you pull the nail out with a pair of pliers the leak won't be slow any more. ;)

I am a little surprised that Sears offered to replace both the tire that had been damaged and the undamaged one on the opposite side. That is more accommodating than any tire shop that I have had experience with has been. Demanding a complete set of new tires after having one go bad seems unreasonable to me. I doubt whether this is actually covered in anyone’s road hazard warranty anywhere.

WestSylvanian you are correct that theoretically it is best two have four brand new matched tires. If you rotate them frequently you might be able to keep the wear fairly even among the four. However by the time a set of tires needs to be replaced, even the tires of the most conscientious drivers nearly always seem to have significant differences in the wear patterns between tires. In my own case we make a left turn onto the main highway most of the time. My wife's car has a supercharger and she manages to wear the the same drive tire down repeatedly.

In practice the front and back tires have far different demands placed on them when braking and having two newer matched tires on the back or front will have functionally no ill effect on the braking distance of your car. In high performance tires with directional tread you are unable to rotate in the traditional sense. You just alternate back and forth between the front and rear. I would argue that anytime you add new tires to the front or the rear you will be increasing your car's overall braking ability. Throwing away three perfectly good tires because you had a problem with one is an extreme waste of resources.

Because of your post I learned something new. The following video shows replacing a valve stem without pulling it through from the inside of the wheel. Basically you pull the valve stem into a tube and then punch it into the wheel when the tube is held up to the opening. It looks like another possible case of American ingenuity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuwEG54yEA8&feature=related