utterly useless tyre fitters

Tom_ed1987

Tom_ed1987

Tom_ed1987

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Joined
1 Mar 2004
Posts
2,014
Location
Warwickshire
How do so many garages make such a mess of a seemingly simple job. Is there any aspect of the motor trade which doesn't overwhelmingly suck?

The latest catalogue of errors from my most recent visit to get all 4 changed:

- Scuffing of alloy by dropping it on its face
- One directional tyre mounted the wrong way round
- air powered grinder used to 'clean' the inside of the wheel rim down to bear alloy prior to applying a balancing weight.
- wheel nuts done up so tight I had to jump on the wrench to free them off

The chap on here who purchased his own tyre machine has it right :p
 
Theres one place I use in my home town out of 7 that is good and they are honestly excellent. Best tyre place ive visited.

Others are total ****
 
Last time I bought some tyres (I got 4 new ones when I bought my car) one kept on going flat. I kept on taking it back and they swore blind that the alloys were corroded and so they couldn't ensure an airtight fit.

I bought some new alloys and had the tyres fitted to them. I still have the old ones in the garage, absolutely nothing wrong with them at all other than aesthetic.

They are *******. A new set of tyres ended up leaving me over £1k lighter.
 
acemastr said:
Then you're a fool, get them to take the tire off, scrub the corrosion off and it'll seat fine.
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That's what I asked them to do. They said they had. Each time I went back. What they were describing was a totally ****** wheel.

There's nothing wrong with any of them. No corrosion at all.

I've no idea why they did this. I just kept on taking it back. They kept on lying to me for no gain.

Just basic ***** behavior.

The cost isn't an issue really, I bought some 2nd hand ones and had them refurbed. When the tyres are getting close to needing replacement I'll probably sell them and put the old ones back on, reclaiming the money.

All about the hassle though. All cos they were being lazy, good for nothing *****.
 
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Wasn't it easier to take it to someone else?

I had a leak from a bead, he took the wheel off, cleaned it up, applied some bead sealer and re fitted.
 
Last time my mum had her tyres changed, the moron fitting the tyre managed to *somehow* put a HOLE through the centre of the alloy, to the point that 2 days after she had them fitted, the tyre had lost pressure. When she took it to BMW to have a look at it, they took the tyre off the rim to find a massive scuff on the inside of the rim and a small hole. This damage was caused by a crowbar that the tyre moron must have slid in between the old tyre and, then used the inside of the alloy to lever the tyre off the rim. The guys at BMW said they had never seen anything like it before.

She took it back to the tyre fitting place, with photographs. The manager came out and got someone to remove wheel and tyre, saw the massive scrape inside the wheel and just went quiet.

He then said "excuse me" went into the office got on the phone and came out about 15 minutes later saying they will replace the alloy for her and ordered a brand new one from the local BMW dealer at £400 odd!
 
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Last set of tyres I had fitted, they put weights down both sides of the wheel and overweighted by about 100%. Had mad vibrations at anything over 50mph so went to a local indy and they were gobsmacked what they had done. Took about 90% of the weights off and all was good again!
 
Tom_ed1987 said:
How do so many garages make such a mess of a seemingly simple job. Is there any aspect of the motor trade which doesn't overwhelmingly suck?
Click to expand...

It shouldn't require so much trial and error in order to find a garage/fitter that you trust but it does seem to, when it comes to the motor trade :(

I used Event Tyres recently and I couldn't have been happier with the service and the way the guy worked, and treated my wheels. He seemed very knowledgeable. I can only hope he's still working for the franchise in this area when I next need some tyres :p
 
A friend of mine picked up a bit of a banger and it has 1 directional tyre and 1 non-directional on the front.

The car pulls to 1 side, even after tracking etc has been done and the garage said it was because of the different tyres.

Is that true, would it make the car do that?
 
A good mate of mine runs his familys Tyre & Exhaust Centre in town so I have no issues at all.

My Tip would be to find a family run business that rely on there reputation rather than one of these chains like Kwitfit etc that just chuck up a Big unit in town & advertise everywhere.
 
Yep find somewhere you trust and stick with them. A good first sign is if you ask them for a recommendation for something half decent and they start by saying "We can do these Ling Lang's for £22, they're basically made by Pirelli" then walk away.
 
I use a local blackcircles fitting place. Only problem I had was they took so long to fit and I had to go back a second time to get the tracking sorted properly. Every time I've had a half decent tyre fitted(PE2 and F1AS2) and the car has been fine with me being able to remove the wheels with relative ease.

I took my dads car to another place that has been about for years. Tried to sell me part worn even though I wanted 4 brand new tyres, albeit budget ones. They use the crimp on weights on the outside rather than the stick on ones on the inside and when I went to change some parts I noticed they had left off a wheel nut on one side....that's back to basics right there.

My dad only started using that place as another place wouldn't fix a problem with a corroded rim letting air out.
 
A local garage I used just couldn't balance my tyres properly. I also found the weights would just fall off after a few miles, because they were not cleaning the area they were sticking them to (so they were basically just sticking them to the dirt) :/

Switched to using a dealer run fitters a couple of miles from work and no problems since with tyres. Cheaper too.
 
I just had a good experience with a local fitter back Street unit type place that I chose via an online tyre shop..

Just had my brake flexi hoses replaced, and what ever muppet put the tyres back on must have used one of those air gun things on max setting.

Tyre place couldn't get it back off, the guy almost gave himself a hernia, the car was bouncing a lot with the force. They wd-40'd it up and told me to come back a bit later. Came back, still the same issue, all 5 nuts were solid and they were scared of snapping the nuts off.

So basically they drenched it with wd-40 again and I took the car home overnight so it could penetrate better.

Day 2 got all 5 bolts free with no damage, but still took some effort. The guy put serious effort in, I was watching him, they then cleaned the bolts and thread up along with grinding the internal part of the rim for a better seal as it was in a bit of a state,balanced and fitted it.

They probably did about 3 hours work on one wheel, I really couldn't fault them so I gave the fitter a fiver for a pint, his parting comments were 'it was Comming off today mate, no matter what, I'd have a word with the last garage you used, if you'd have had a puncture you'd have been knackered'.

There are some really great small outfits, and equally I've seen shocking work by main dealers, a main dealer is no guarantee of quality work by any means.
 
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