These Guys Aren't MonkeyLads

[Fred Munro]

After reading numerous posts about tire-changing MonkeyLads ruining the day
of righteous AudiLads, I thought I'd post about my positive experience last
weekend.
I was picking up some high-speed vibration (how high will go unmentioned to
protect the guilty) off my Dunlop SP9000s. I had such a good experience with
the installation at Wall's tire that I figured - hey, no prob, I'll take
them back and get James to rebalance them. But what's this, Wall's Tire now
only do commercial vehicles, they won't touch passenger vehicles. Go down
the road to Burman Tire, they say, we merged with them and they do all our
passenger car work. Oho, thinks I, here we go again. I go home and get my
torque wrench and drive off to Burman Tire, prepared to do battle with the
forces of darkness ( a torque wrench is very handy when battling the forces
of darkness, but that's another story).
"Rebalance?" says the manager "No problem, pull it into Bay 1". Two young
lads are in Bay 2, finishing up a job on a Magic Wagon. Oooh, nice car, sir.
How do you like your Audi? What a great colour - look at the blue, green,
and red shimmers - looks like a pearl. How fast will it go? Hmm, perceptive
lads, these. One chap pulls out a floor jack - "where's the jack point?". I
pick my jaw up off the floor. Nobody has ever ASKED me about the jack
points. I point out the front points and he slowly slides in the jack.
"How's this"? "Too far in" - he pulls it back and slowly lifts the car. Off
comes the left front wheel. "Wow, these are some tires. Dunlops, eh? Good
tire". He lugs it over to the balancer. "Hmm, someone used clip-on weights.
Those ruin mag rims. You want stick-ons". He spins it up - 1 oz out of
balance. "Nice tires - look how true they spin. I don't often see that". He
removes the old weights and spins it again. "Needs 1 oz." He mounts the new
weights. His buddy is running a jack under the rear. "Where do you want to
lift?". I tell him I usually use the rear factory jack points. "I usually
use the rear control arm" he says. The first lad says "Jack it EXACTLY where
he tells you". OK - up goes the rear and off come the tires. The fronts are
going back on and out comes the impact gun. Here we go, thinks I. He picks
up the bolts. "You've got Never-Seize on these- it screws up the torque" Ya,
right, I think, what do you guys know about torque? The lad wipes off the
bolts with a rag, runs them in quite loose and slowly, so slowly lowers the
car. Out comes his torque wrench. We colour me blue and slap me silly -
these guys hand tighten the bolts with a torque wrench. "Torque?" says he.
"85 ft.lb". "OK."  He works his way around the car. His buddy is peering
inside. "Wow, what a fabulous machine. Do you mind me asking - how much are
these worth?". After some Audi small talk, I go in to see the manager. "No
charge". I compliment him on his employees - "Yup, those are a good pair of
lads". One of the lads backs the S4 out into the lot. "Fantastic. What a
great car, sir".

I guess it beats a Magic Wagon.

They're not all MonkeyLads out there. You run across a few gems now and
then. They handled my S4 like it was an egg. I'll go back!

Fred Munro
'94 S4