I recently had to learn how the much larger half lives. I dealt with a normal tire shop. I recently upgraded the wheels on Ms. Squankum's least favorite vehicle, the Econoline. I wanted something lighter (for ride) and also wanted four wheels of the same offset (long story) and also that didn't look bad (rust, different colors, another story.) So the upgrade was to "factory Ford aluminum wheels of the same era", and the source was a big company that refinishes wheels and sells them on ebay. They may have more than one location in the nation (hazy memory, it was a few months back) and I was very impressed by the quality of their work. They really looked like brand new wheels! Machined and clearcoated in some spots, painted and clearcoated in others.
Then the new Firestones arrived from Tire Rack and I toodled on down to my usual friendly abnormal tire shop, explained what I was there for, and I started tearing into the four boxes of wheels I had, and there, in the bright sunlight of their parking lot, I noticed that this wheel reconditioning business has people with different ideas about what "charcoal" color meant for inset sections for this era of Ford wheels. Two were close to coal black metallic (what I was hoping for) and two were more like platinum, which Ford also did back when. They even had "charcoal" stickers on the inside of the barrels on the lighter colored ones.
Well, I was in a pickle, so I just had my tire guys mount and balance everything and put the dark colors on one side and the lighter colors on the other side. Ms. Squankum was hitting the road the next day, no time for a fix. Since this was a surprise gift, this also gave her a chance to tell me which of those two colors she
did want!
So, months pass, the van is far away and there's nothing I can do about it. I mean, sure, I can ***** at the wheel reconditioner, and he can send me return labels to send back the wrong ones, and I can order two new ones of the right color (and open the boxes and check!) and send them back with her in her fancier new giant van another week, but can she take them to the tire shop that's 200 yards away from her business? NoooOOOoooOO.
So I drove down there for several days, she thought maybe I'd work selling tomatoes or something. I wound up fixing things that crossed my path, mostly, and having brought my tools this time, oh so many things presented themselves. Like the blower fan on the Econoline crapping out when I first drove it! None of this work was performed in a cool, dehumidified underground lair, oh no ,quite the opposite, and Spanish moss, too. There was, at least, a good shade tree.
Another Econoline chore I caught up on was getting the wrong color wheels removed and the tires remounted and balanced on the new, correctly colored wheels. Also, while the van drove reasonably straight, the position of the steering wheel indicated Something Was Wrong, so time for an alignment.
I can't complain about the price of an alignment. I know how much money goes into that machine and that they don't let any flying monkey do that work.
I don't know if the tire M&B was done by a lower grade of monkey, but I did see the van in one bay, and later, in the bay with an alignment rack, which made sense, given the two missions. (Once or twice I left the store and walked down the busy highway 100 yards and peered across to the far side. Hard to hide a white van. Earlier in the process I just peered out the window to see if the van had left its parking spot.)
Not counting the shop supplies ******** (I'll never not hate that obvious gambit, I remember when I first saw it, my sister took her Jetta to a VW dealer in CA in the 80's) ... I paid about $80ish for M&B of two tires.
Now let me complain about the alignment: I didn't get much of a chance to test drive it, circumstances kept me hopping, but being a paranoid and distrustful sort, when I got the van back to my lair shade tree I did check the tire pressures and M&B monkey set them to about 55 psi and alignment monkey did not check that vs. the 35 psi I had the left side tires at. So the alignment isn't what it could be. I'm sure it's better than it was. So maybe I can complain a little about the price of that alignment...
Now, let me tell you about my local tire shop. They're Mexicans, the place is a hole in the wall. There are people I just cannot recommend it to. Waiting room? There are some old car seats sitting on the sidewalk out front. They are very dirty. Sometimes there's an office chair, also dirty. These seats might be in the shade, but sometimes not at all. They are probably out of the rain if it's a light drizzle.
There is no inside shop. Given the often pleasant weather of our region, they have a simple car lift, kind of an industrial grade QuickJack that you (or they) drive on and then the put some rubber scraps in there to pad your rocker seams or lift points and lift your car a foot in the air. They also have a lot of floor jacks.
The tire machines are inside a small shed tacked on to the front of the building. I don't know what the insurance requirements are (ha) but I'm allowed everywhere. Lately even allowed to do the final torque with my torque wrench before they fully release the floor jack.
I don't know if these guys left Mexico hoping to bring affordable auto repairs to America's poorest car owners, but that appears to be their clientele (other than me) and who keep showing up, in droves.
I always pay in cash. I never got the impression they did anything but. And some operations are $10/tire, like a patch or quality patch-plug, and M&B runs $15/tire. I think I had to pay $17/tire when a recent BMW wheel situation required new TPS sensors/valve installs. I used to take whatever I needed there in some other vehicle so I coudl jsut hand them a wheel or wheel and tire , and say "do X", because, like Francis in
Stripes, I don't like people touching my
stuff. But now that our fleet has a giant van that I can't get into our garage and I have no level place to jack it up and work on it, I have to take it to them even for rotations, and I've found out, I wasn't saving any money by removing the part where they used impact guns. They're just that cheap!
Now, I don't know if they're paying their workman's comp insurance or unemployment insurance or any kind of insurance! Or sales tax, I have no clue what they're doing, I'm sure the local MegaloTire chain feels oppressed by all of their overhead vs. these guys and their tire shack.
But these guys just have a great
attitude. They don't whine or upsell, they tell it straight, they work hard.
Back in olden days, before Tire Rack was the mailorder monster it has become, I was an early customer of them. (I think the first place I mail ordered tires from in the 80's was soon after bought by the then-small Tire Rack.) So it was normal for me to take some new fancy Bridgestone or Yokohoma street tires down to the MegaloTire and say "M&B only, please", and then, when I started the autocross fanatic era, showing up with four tires and four wheels, same request, and the service writer said to me, "You know, we can get you these tires." So I said, "And how much would that cost?" And he started looking into it, I think he picked up the phone (i.e., called Tire Rack's commercial customer phone #) and when he was done with that, he told me the price, and four tires, it would all tally up $80 more than what I was doing. And he looked at me like, "So why aren't you doing that?" And I looked at hime thinking "So why would I do that?" hHe thought I owed them a living, and I most certainly did
not.
Hindsight: I'm now older but still fairly fit -- and I now realize that was the era of my putt putt cars with toy wheels and tires. Good Lord, the size and weight of wheels and tires on her used (decade old) BMW SUV shock me. Me moving around those 14" alloy wheels and tires (ranging from 185mm to 225mm, depending) was not as easy as juggling tennis balls to me, but it sure didn't tax me.
In those days, when I lived in an apartment, the end of an autox weekend or Sunday meant coming home, backing into the parking space closest to my ground floor door, opening the hatch, and unloading, and for wheels/tires, that meant, down the sidewalk /a few steps, left turn at the hedge, through the front door, right turn through the living room, right turn through two doorways, into my bedroom, left turn into the closet, stack tire in rear corner. And if you're truly a fanatic you
bag your race tires in contractor bags to slow down their aging, for they are like a rose that has been cut, and it's all death and decay from that point, the softness must be preserved...
