I took my minivan in to the dealership for a recall, and while it was there I had them look at some vibrations that my regular mechanic wasn’t able to diagnose. I thought maybe they’d have more experience with this particular model.
Anyway, they came back saying that the vibration is caused by a bad tie rod, which is plausible, and they don’t really want that much to replace it ($148), so I’m fine with that. They also say they need to do an alignment after they replace the tie rod, which seems perfectly normal. Except they want me to buy new tires too.
I’ll admit, my tires are nearing the end of their life and they need to be replaced soon anyway, but they still have usable tread left and I see no reason to junk them just yet. But per the service rep, “They’re too bald to even do an alignment with.”
Now, I’m a somewhat competent shadetree mechanic, and I’ve even done a rudimentary alignment in my garage with string and a tape measure, so I’m not exactly mystified by the process. I can’t see how the amount of tread on the tires can make that big of a deal, as long as there’s no abnormal tire wear, which there’s not. They’re just worn.
But I’m not experienced enough in the dark art of wheel alignments to call bullshit. Regardless of what I find out here, I’m not going to pay dealership prices for new tires, but I want to know how confrontational I need to be.
I think you are right. New tires make a very tiny difference. The dealership is using this policy to sell tires. I’d drive it down the street to a tire shop and let them do the tie rod too. Call ahead of time and tell them what you want. Maybe you will be back when you need the tires. I’m puzzled over how your tie rod is worn and the tire wear is normal.
I have no complaints with the steering, so for all I know the tie rod is BS too. Given the list of symptoms I gave them, they could have come back with any number of front suspension parts that I would have just nodded along with, but they also said I needed new pads and rotors at all 4 corners (just replaced 1.5 years ago) and this tire thing, so now everything they say is suspect.
I’ve found several dealerships to be unscrupulous-one tried to get me to buy a new AC compressor, when it turned out there was just a simple problem with temperature knob being a bit loose.
I don’t see the problem. You’re free to take your car any where else for an alignment.
Tire wear isn’t the only thing that indicates a problem. Is one tire wearing faster than the other? Any cupping? Any deep cracks or bulges on the tire side? Is the wear uniform around the tire?
What is the weather like where you live? Are the streets wet often? How old are the tires? Some pros say 6 years is the time a tire needs to be replaced regardless of tread. This doesn’t mean 6 years on your car, but 6 years since manufacture. Look at the tires, and find what looks like a tire identification number. The last 4 digits of that number are coded to the date of manufacture. Example. A code might look like MCMJY4209. The 42 would indicate the 42nd week of the 09 (2009) year. If the tires are older than 6 years, change them even if you feel there is still usable tread. Have your tires checked by an independent pro, then decide.
Usually, the dealer and the service department have nothing to do with each other, other than in a superficial way. Sales people try to cultivate service people so they have someone to go beg to take care of a really irate customer, but the dealer often has little say over how the service department operates.
Depending on what your car’s suspension allows, there are up to three adjustments to make when aligning a car. Camber, caster, and toe. If you “aligned” your car with a tape measure, you were only setting toe (and if you set it such the measurement of the front of the tires was equal to the back of the tires, that may have been wrong.) camber and toe misalignments affect handling and tire wear. Caster misalignments affect handling but don’t cause abnormal tire wear.
Now the thing is, a car is aligned on a “rack.” the car is sitting on the surface of the rack just as if it was sitting on your driveway. If the tires are worn irregularly, then there’s no guarantee that the wheels are positioned properly to align the car correctly.
Seems to me if they have usable tread they wouldn’t be bald. :dubious: Anyway, it’s not necessary for the tires to meet some benchmark in order to do a wheel alignment. As the name says, it aligns the wheels, not the tires. Crappy tires may make the car act like it’s out of alignment, but they don’t proscribe performing an alignment. I’d go elsewhere.
There really isn’t a problem per se, I’m just curious if there was any factual basis for the service manager’s claim that they couldn’t do an alignment. It’s going to affect my opinion of this place, and ultimately determine how much work I have them do. That’s why I put this in GQ, after all.
I’m educated about tires and I’m comfortable with my decision to run them through the rest of the summer. For what it’s worth, my tires are 2 years old and I haven’t noticed any dry-rotting, cracking, bubbling, separation, or any uneven wear that would cause me alarm. Tire Rack has some good articles about tirehttp://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=183, but they recommend 6-10 years from manufacture, depending on how they’re stored.
But this is all irrelevant because I wasn’t told that my tires were too old, I was told that they were too bald for an alignment. It made me :dubious:
Thanks Gary. I’ve decided I’m going to head down there first thing tomorrow and have them show me what’s got them so alarmed about my tires. If all they’ve got is that they’re a bit worn, I’m going to have them do the minimum and split.
FWIW, I’ve done business with 3 auto dealer service shops. One Toyota, two Ford.
All three were absolutely professional, polite, and honest. Hell, I took my car into a Ford dealer shop just a few months ago with a tire I suspected had a slow leak. First visit - they spent a few hours looking for a leak, and finding nothing, didn’t charge me anything. Second visit when low pressure reoccurred after about a month, they replaced the valve stem and resealed the tire - no attempt to sell me new ones. Problem solved, for cheap. And I went in to each dealer expecting a crooked shop, so I was pleased.
I was just making a D+D joke. Now, quickie oil change places, that’s another ball of wax. I could theoretically need special lubricant or engine cleaner etc., but not EVERY FREAKIN TIME i come in. At least program your drones to make the pitch every third time I come in or something. On the few times when it does seem appropriate and I’m thinking of using them for the convenience instead of just buying a $5 pint of fix-an-engine from Megalomart, they’re inevitably like $30 bucks. Nuh uh.
On what planet does it work this way? Despite it rather misleading name the service department is a department in the dealership that, um services cars. :rolleyes:
Gee thanks for that. Remind me to come kick the shovel out of your hand and insult you and the job you do sometime.
I run a large service department for a major car brand. I run the shop honestly, and will not tolerate any dishonesty by any of my employees.
Getting back to the OP I can only think of two times where I might want new tires before an alignment. The first is if there is one tire of a different size such as a temp spare mounted on the car, the other is if you had 3 brand new tires and one bald ( or almost so) tire. In both of these cases the size difference could cause issues with the alignment.
What kind of vibration, and when does occur? A tie rod would have to be pretty bad to cause a vibration.
I drove down there this morning and talked to a different service manager, who agreed with my :dubious: about the tires preventing an alignment but recommended I get new tires anyway. Not at all pushy, and they would have been fine with my plan. He cut me a break on a couple things, price matched the tires to another local store and I ended up ordering them anyway. Super nice guy. At this point I’m just going to chalk it up to a communications issue, because it doesn’t seem like they were trying to pull one over on me.
Rick - Today they actually agreed that the tie rod wasn’t likely the only culprit, but they didn’t have another suggestion. I think they’re just blaming the tires, but it’s been there since I bought it and has persisted through two sets of tires (it doesn’t go away with new tires or a balance and alignment). It’s a general vibration at highway speeds, peaking at 75mph, usually shaking the wheel but not always, and it seems to get worse when I load the steering slightly in either direction. It makes driving through West Virginia pretty miserable. I had one shop tell me it was the sway bar end links, and another told me that I needed new wheel bearings. Unfortunately I move around a lot and I haven’t taken it to the same shop twice, so everyone has a new theory.
Glad that worked out. Sounds like the first guy was trained to sell more than he was trained to have good mechanical judgment. The second guy seems to be much better at serving his customers.
Every once in a great while a mystery like this comes up in the auto repair world. Apparently the root cause, whatever it is, lies outside normal experience. It may get figured out through the luck of finding the right person to deal with it, or by a lucky guess by someone. And it’s possible it may never get figured out.
A vibration that peaks at 75 mph is unusual (for wheel balance it’s almost always 60-65). I’ve never seen vibration caused by sway bar links, I’m not sure that’s even possible, and it’s pretty easy to see if there’s anything wrong with them. Wheel bearings normally cause a rumbling noise, but again it’s pretty easy to determine if there’s any looseness or roughness in them. So there are a few items I think can be eliminated from consideration, but I’m sorry to say I don’t have a good guess as to what it might be.
As to unscrupulous, evil, dishonest dealers, I wish I had addressed that earlier. I was considering it, but after GameHat’s positive comments and Ludovic’s joke explanation, I figured there was some balance so I let it go. I now regret not speaking up.
The thing is, for any type of auto repair facility – dealers, chains, independent shops, shade tree mechanics – there are some who are better and some who are worse. You can find examples of incompetence and/or dishonesty in any of those categories, and likewise you can find examples of highly competent and honorable ones. Our perceptions are colored by what we’ve experienced and what we’ve heard, but one individual’s exposure is only a tiny fraction of all that is out there. It’s unfair to blanketly condemn dealership service departments as all being bad. There are some lousy ones, but there are many quite good ones as well.
