Time to buy my own tire machine and balancer

[g-rex]

Every time I have to deal with putting tires on something, it just reinforces that I need to start doing it myself. Between my wife and I, we have 3 cars and 5 motorcycles, so it will pay for itself in no time.

The most recent series of events was this. I had new tires put on the Allroad this weekend. The guy gave me a quote without knowing what car the tires were going on. I was ok with the price. Had them install the tires.

After I left, I was looking at the invoice more closely and saw a charge for $31.96 - TPMS Repair kit. Well now wait a minute, I thought the Allroads had an indirect TPMS system. *research* Sure enough, they do. So what exactly did I pay for here? Called the shop back and spoke with the manager. He chalked it up to an honest mistake. Maybe, but if your whole business is tires, I think you should know what vehicles come with what, and at a minimum, whoever was doing the work should have said *hey, this isn't right*. Didn't happen. Let's not talk about the fact that they didn't replace the valve stems or caps either. I've never in 30 years had a set of tires put on when they didn't replace the valve stems. I didn't make a big stink about it because I'm not about to have them mess with the car again. I wonder how many times they've charged for that and nobody noticed. Slimy if you ask me.

I've tried everything from mom and pop stores all the way up to the national chains. I'm convinced tire guys are almost as bad as (fill in the blank for your favorite sleazy business here). I've had wheels gouged so bad you can see a strip of aluminum coming off the wheel, I've had tires mounted backwards, I've had wheels mounted backwards. It's ridiculous.

Time to cough up for a serious setup and start doing it myself. I do all of my own wrenching. Tire changes are literally the ONLY thing I can't do at home. That's about to change.

/rant over

[flowhigh]

Go for it. I'm sure it'll pay off after a while.

[bhvrdr]

I go to a high end wheel shop now where the guy refurbs wheels. He charged 50 per tire for mount balance but in the end its saved me money in damage other shops have done. I have a car with 7500 forged wheels on it and most shops just turned me away and in retrospect im glad they did

Mike

[A4x]

Last time I got tires at a tire chain, they mounted up 4 driver's side tires lol.

I did not have them install on my vehicle, just mount the tires to rim. So maybe that's on me for not being specific enough? Lol.

[choppstixxx]

My issue is that I have only used "tuner" shops to do my mount/balances and somehow every single one has mucked up a rim some way/how. I am not asking for flawless mounting, but I'm also not asking you to put noticeable deep scratches in my rims. I'm to the point where I might start plasti-dipping the entire face of the rims before I take them in as a barrier to any marring or mistakes.

[rcprato]

I feel your pain..... the shop can have state of the art mounting/balancing equipment but if the don't know how to use it you get a crappy mount/balance.

I use my local VW dealer and service writer knows I am picky (my wife probably has another word) so he gets one of the techs to do the mount balance that will take time to do it right, but more than once the balance has been off and has to be redone.

Choppstixx, the Dunn Tire on Jefferson Road has brand new Hunter Equipment, not cheap if you don't buy tires from them but I went there a couple weeks ago for a RoadForce re-balance on summer wheels and they did a nice job. VW dealer didn't rotate rim on tire and then they did which helped with high RoadForce measurement one rim/tire was getting.

I figure it will cost $5K to $9K to get good mounting/balancing equipment so that has a pretty long ROI even if you have a small fleet of vehicles.

[joe biker]

I feel your pain..... the shop can have state of the art mounting/balancing equipment but if the don't know how to use it you get a crappy mount/balance.

I use my local VW dealer and service writer knows I am picky (my wife probably has another word) so he gets one of the techs to do the mount balance that will take time to do it right, but more than once the balance has been off and has to be redone.

Choppstixx, the Dunn Tire on Jefferson Road has brand new Hunter Equipment, not cheap if you don't buy tires from them but I went there a couple weeks ago for a RoadForce re-balance on summer wheels and they did a nice job. VW dealer didn't rotate rim on tire and then they did which helped with high RoadForce measurement one rim/tire was getting.

I figure it will cost $5K to $9K to get good mounting/balancing equipment so that has a pretty long ROI even if you have a small fleet of vehicles.

You can probably pickup a used
Snap On tire machine and balancer for a couple of grand.
When I lived in NJ my buddy had that set up and it saved me a lot of money.
And I had no wheel damage and the balancer did the job.
Roadforce machines are nice however
they are very time consuming to get it
perfect


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[choppstixxx]

Choppstixx, the Dunn Tire on Jefferson Road has brand new Hunter Equipment, not cheap if you don't buy tires from them but I went there a couple weeks ago for a RoadForce re-balance on summer wheels and they did a nice job. VW dealer didn't rotate rim on tire and then they did which helped with high RoadForce measurement one rim/tire was getting.

I'll have to check that out next time, I also feel like a lot has to do with whatever tech you get doing the mount/balance. Because I took two different sets of rims to the same "tuner" shop and one came out flawless, while the other had issues.

[rcprato]

I'll have to check that out next time, I also feel like a lot has to do with whatever tech you get doing the mount/balance. Because I took two different sets of rims to the same "tuner" shop and one came out flawless, while the other had issues.

100% Accurate !