[Vwdiesel] [Audi-VW-Diesels] Tires!

[David Cook]

Man, I wish you hadn't said it was the Firestone
places!

I had picked up a screw in one of the rear tires of my
Corrado, so I took it in to have it fixed.  

They complained about the old fix a flat that was in
there (understandable, though I had forgotten about
it, I avoided putting it in that time), and brought
the tire out, fixed.  The guy showed me a place on the
tire where the tread appeared a little "thicker" than
the rest.  He said that the screw was in there so long
that it didn't allow the tire to wear properly.  I
thought that was a little odd, since the screw was in
deeper than the surrounding rubber, but took it home,
installed it, and ran a couple errands before I had to
head out on a 2 hr trip.

On the errands, I had the worst vibration from that
corner you ever could imagine!  Just terrible!

So, I went back to the Firestone place, and
complained.  The guy said, "well, we can look at it,
but it'll be a couple hours cause now we're too busy".
 I told him I needed to take off and was there
anything he could do?

He said no, but suggested I go to the store in the
town 20 miles down the road, since I would be driving
through.  Maybe they wouldn't be so busy.

So, I vibrated my way from Manhattan to Junction City,
and found the Firestone place there.

The kid who was going to pull the tire came in and
said, "I knew what is wrong with the tire before I
even  pulled it off.  Your treads are badly
separated!"  It was so bad I could really see the
waving and separation in the treads.

Forutnately, they had a two tires that fit the Corrado
(it is a fairly odd size) so I purchased them and was
on my way.

I couldn't believe that a "professional" tire place
sent me out the door with a tire that had the
beginnings of tread separation!  It was the manager
that showed it to me, so he should have known what he
was doing.  

I saved the bad tire and brought it into the Manhattan
store the next day and told the manager there what had
happened, how he sent me out the door on a very
dangerous tire.

He claimed that somehow the old (very old) fix a flat
had somehow caused tread separation.  I have a very
hard time believing that a product that inflates tires
could cause separation, especially separation that
doesn't happen until I have the tire worked on.

Anyway, he bought one of the two tires for me (he
didn't think I had to replace the tires in a
pair-which we all know he would have told anyone to do
if the had come in looking for a tire) but that store
will never ever ever see a dollar of my business
again.

Come to think of it, he didn't refund any of the money
to have the tire "fixed" originally!  GRRR!!

David


--- "Roa, Greg" <Greg.Roa at Cinergy.COM> wrote:

>  
> The Firestone tire shops near where I live offer the
> lifetime alignment
> package you're speaking of.  There's a minimum
> mileage or time limit
> between alignments (you can't have it done weekly
> for example), but
> they'll do them for free for the life of the car. 
> I've not found it to
> be the best deal personally, as I don't get the car
> aligned often enough
> to justify the extra cost.  They've also got a 4
> time alignment pack
> that works better for me, because you can use it on
> any car you bring
> in.
> 
> That said, I'm not very impressed with the one near
> me.  They always
> want to give you a reason why they can't align the
> car, to the point
> where they will flat out lie.  I took an audi into
> the shop with
> completely new front and rear suspension, bushings,
> struts, tie rods,
> ball joints, ect, and they told me the tie rods were
> frozen so they
> couldn't align the car.  I told them it was odd,
> because everything was
> new and I had replaced it all myself the day before.
>  The manager got
> rather red-faced, went back to the garage, then came
> back with a
> different excuse.  He told me that the problem was
> actually that they
> had to have some sort of straps to pull down on the
> car per the factory
> alignment procedure.  I told them to just align the
> thing like all of
> the other shops have, and stop coming up with
> excuses.  I guess they did
> a decent job, but I wasn't happy about the
> experience. 
> 
> Greg Roa
> Cincinnati, OH
> 00' Jetta Tdi
> Bunches of old audis
> 
> 
> >Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:15:22 -0700 (PDT)
> >From: David Cook <vwdieselbunny at yahoo.com>
> >Subject: Re: [Vwdiesel] [Audi-VW-Diesels] Tires!
> >To: Audi-VW-Diesels at yahoogroups.com, diesel list
> <vwdiesel at vwfans.com>
> >Message-ID:
> <20060413021522.17043.qmail at web51308.mail.yahoo.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> >
> >I forgot, I was also going to ask if there was such
> a
> >place that did life time alignments?  IE, you have
> >them do the alignment, and can bring it back later
> and
> >if its out they'll fix it?
> >
> >Seems like I saw that mentioned one time, but
> cannot
> >remember where.
> >
> >David
> 
> 


David Cook
Red '86 Cabriolet Diesel Powered
Red '90 g60 Corrado 
Brown and White '78 Westy Campmobile "Bear"
and others in various states of disrepair
Pictures here: community.webshots.com/user/superdave5599

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