Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2011 03:57:18 -0500
Reply-To: Max Wellhouse <dimwittedmoose@CFU.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Max Wellhouse <dimwittedmoose@CFU.NET>
Subject: Re: Adventure at Bob's Tire Corral/Tire Rack Approved Insallers
In-Reply-To: <400703.92474.qm@web33605.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Well, they wither flunked out of NASCAR Pit Crew School, or have
another "sideline" business when not working at the tire shop.....
I'm very fortunate here in town to have a Tire Rack approved
installer that does this stuff out of his shop at his house, and he
has all the high tech mounting equipment. He's never charged me more
than $10 to mount and balance a tire, even alloys where he manually
buffs the sealing surface so the nitrogen doesn't leak out over
time. He also has a mobile service where he comes to your house to
do the work.
Tire Rack has a list of approved installers on their website. Maybe
check them out the next time you need work done to see if there's one
near your house. I would think they of all shops would not gouge
someone that bought tires at Tire Rack. If they did, I'd report them
to TR Customer Service.
I didn't think the General Altimas had stiff enough sidewalls for the
Vanagon, but then you may have put those tires on a non Vanagon, come
to think of it. We have the unidirectional Generals on our Outback
and the bi-directional Altimas on our Legacy and they have been great
tires for the money.
DM&FS
At 03:34 PM 3/26/2011, David M wrote:
>I went looking for a place to install my mail-order (Tire Rack)
>General Altimax tires. I was determined not to hand over to my local
>Firestone place the $60 the last pair of tires cost me to get
>mounted. So I went to the 'poorer' section of town... to Bob's Tire
>Corral. Well it turned out that Bob was nowhere in sight, only Jaime
>and Jorge. No-one spoke English and all the signs were only in
>Spanish. However, they did know how to say 'Thirty Dollar' and they
>did understand 'Ok'. I drove the van over to the ancient machines
>and two guys appeared like a pit crew. One jacked up the left rear
>wheel and one jacked up the right rear wheel. I tried to say I
>wanted to keep one of the tires as a spare but they did not
>understand. I tried to tell them the tire pressures I wanted but
>they had no clue what I was
> saying. I've no idea if I got new tire valves. I did not get a
> receipt. But I was out of there in 15 minutes with the tires
> mounted at half the cost of Firestone.
