08-15-2001, 10:45 AM
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CC Member
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Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gainesville, Fl USA,
Posts: 298
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Not Ranked
While I thought it would be one of the most rewarding experiences of the bulid, mounting the tires on the wheels was actually the worst part so far. I had a set of 315/35/17s and 275/40/17s mounted on a new set of compomotive HBs about 6 months ago. First, it was a challenge to just find a place that could mount the tires. I don't think you will have this problem though, since your Trigos are (I assume) 15". In the end I ended up taking them to the local Porsche dealership, as I figured this was my best bet due to the high dollar 17 and 18" wheels/tires they mount on the new cars. Plus they had what appeared to be very new equipment.
This is how it started out. I called the dealership and told them the size of the wheels (9.5 and 11” wide) and the size of the tires and asked if they could mount them. ‘No problem’ was the reply, as I recall. When I asked the price, I was told $16 per wheel, which seemed very reasonable to me. He also said I could wait on them. When I asked about the risk of scratching the new wheels, he replied, ‘we mount these size tires all the time and maybe one of out every 200 we do gets a small scratch’. After talking to several other local tire shops, I decided I had the most confidence in the Porsche dealership. So I made plans to take off work and take the wheels and tires by. The manager of the service department (the same I spoke with on the phone) came out and looked at the wheels and tires and said they should have no problem that I should drop them off in the shop and come back about 6 hours later. This is when I should have left. I told him that he said I could wait on them and he replied they are very busy and customers are not allowed in the shop area. Hmmm… This should have set off the alarm upstairs, but didn’t. What can I say, I really wanted to get the tires mounted. I asked to verify the price and he told me $33 a wheel to mount and balance the tires. I replied I was told $16 on the phone and his retort was that was the price for smaller tires and that he didn’t know they were this big’. In retrospect, I really should have left at this point. I told him I didn’t need the balancing as I just wanted to mount the tires to check for clearance problems. After wasting 30 minutes convincing him he should not perform the balancing and that the car was a ’97 mustang cobra (if it’s not in their computer, they can’t work on it), I begrudgingly left my wheels and tires, having agreed on a price of $26 per tire to mount the tires only; no balancing.
My father got a call about 5:30 that afternoon that the tires were ready and since I was at work, he went by the pick them up for me. By the time he got there it was pretty dark out and he loaded them. When I got home my dad looked quite depressed and said I needed to take a look at the wheels. At this point I felt like complete $%^&. I forgot to mention that I bought these wheels and tires for my father for Christmas. When I looked at them it turned out all four of the tires were mounted with the yellow dots NOT opposite the valve stems (which I’m sure they did on purpose so they have to be dismounted, rotated and remounted), and more importantly, all four wheels had several scratches on them. So much for the ‘one out of 200 might get a small scratch on them’. At this point I was enraged.
After cooling down for a few hours, I took out the Mothers and buffed some of the scratches out to the point that you could only notice them if you really looked for them. So I don’t mean to scare you by telling you this story; I only wanted to tell you that if for any reason you feel that the place doing the mounting is not on the up and up, take your wheels and tires elsewhere!!!
Mike
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