El Wray

iTrader: (1)

I was in a strap at the time and would have preferred waiting a month before buying the next two. Plus - Dropping $800-$1000 on new tires when the existing set was ~6 months old seemed like a complete waste.

STi-owns-evo

iTrader: (4)

Being a former employee at America's Tire Co, if they say the hole is too big, it's because it probably is. I've repaired hundreds of tires and AFAIK, never had one come back. A lot of smaller tire shops don't care about the liability a national chain cares about, so they bend the rules a lot more while ATC will err on the cautious side 9/10 times.

Something to add, is by law they can not let you drive off their parking lot if they took the tire off and it was unrepairable. It's something they'll use to get you to buy tires. So, if it's a gamble: if your puncture is within 1 inch of the sidewall. if the puncture is at an extreme angle, or if it's a large puncture, don't go in without a backup plan. Since the Bay Area is blessed with having a shop that shaves tires at Roger Kraus, always remember you can throw your spare on (if the tire is less than 6 years old), so you can go get a single tire shaved.

glenspen

iTrader: (3)

Exactly. If 3 of your tires have good tread left then take a new one to Brandon at Roger Krause and he will shave it to match the other 3.

Get him talking about his racing too...he's a really talented driver

chimchimm5

iTrader: (9)

I've been to AT for several of our cars and this has been in line with my experience. I've had several flats repaired by them, but they also follow strict guidelines what they will and will not repair.

example: I used a plug kit and repaired a tire myself (I've done this many times successfully). In one instance, the tire continued to slowly leak air... like 2 psi per day. So I brought it in to AT. Because I had attempted the plug, they refused to fix it and instead I had to buy a new tire from them.... I get it; they have strict guidelines, so while disappointing, I understand.

more on the story: I ended up having to buy a new tire for the car (FWD). They have some policy that if one set of tires has > 2mm of tread depth difference, then the deeper on should be in the back. They will BLINDLY follow this policy... and ended up putting:
FRONT: 6mm (left) and 5mm (right, was the corner with the puncture)
REAR: 5mm (left) and 8mm (right, new tire)

^^ see the stupid? They moved the new replacement tire from the front where the puncture was, to the rear (swapped with the rear right) simply because the difference was > 2mm. BUT they didn't touch the left because the difference was < 2mm.

I questioned them on their reasoning for this since I want the new tire to be in the front to wear down. The guy didn't know. So I pressed it, and eventually he showed me their little sign... and it was because understeer is safer than oversteer. So they're telling me 2.0mm is ok, but 2.1mm is immediate oversteer death? B.S. Plus, it was summer and we're in a draught so I swapped em back.

Overall though, AT has actually been a pretty good business to us and I'll continue to go there.

chimchimm5

iTrader: (9)

Any places that shave in the south bay? Roger Krause is way the heck up on Castro Valley.

wwrx

iTrader: (5)

Custom Alignment in Mountain View. But please measure overall diameter before shaving! I learned that from Joe@Custom Alignment that new tires may be smaller in the overall diameter regardless of the thread depth of the old ones! Tires grow in size over time and use (I guess side wall become taller). I had to replace one of RS3s on my STI. They measured all 4 and the new one was the smallest in overal diameter (mounted of course). That's kind of counter intuitive and not every shop knows about that.

So what they told me matched my case perfectly. You just need to monitor overall tire diameter from time to time just to be sure that the new one didn't become larger than older ones.

El Wray

iTrader: (1)

Beware the rrcockulous mtn view price tag there. I called them for an alignment. Nothing special, just stock/no toe. $260. One time.

wombatsauce

iTrader: (7)

AT in Mountain View just pulled a nail and patched a tire on my car yesterday. I took a chance because it was close to the sidewall (about 1") but they still did it, and that's awesome. I have bought tires from this store, but not for a long time.

Yes - on a couple different occasions I have taken a set of mounted/balanced wheel/tire sets off a Subaru, verified the pressures are correct, and put a yardstick across them and found at times drastic differences even on new tires. One set had a couple thousand miles (Kumhos on 17" P1's) and some were over 1/2 an inch different from each other. Not expected!

Sooooo true. Brandon is a great guy. I have taken him all my "special" cars and he always always has some trick to get it right.

Yep - it's all about liability, rules, and big business. Often people mistake this for being un-helpful but the person would essentially get fired for helping.

Sounds about right. It costs money to hire competent people. Never going to a chain (or anywhere other than Custom Alignment or Roger Kraus) ever again. Both of those places are stellar and some of the few places I have NEVER had any sort of issue with (like having to bring back a car).

Custom Alignment has a unique way of balancing a tire on a wheel where they spin balance the wheel, then rotate the tire on the wheel to get it as close as possible before adding weights. Tires are not always perfect, and they can use these imperfections to balance it out. I thought that was pretty cool, and had never heard of this before.