kjgood

After having several "experiences" in past years with damage to alloy wheels courtesy of those shops to whom I entrust with a tire mounting, I am close to paranoia on the subject. Like many here, I typically order my tires from Tire Rack or less frequently, from Discount Tire (not very often, Jim!), so I am always torn about who should be mounting my tires. Obviously, this subject becomes even more heightened when dealing with an S2000 and a well-known appetite for tires.

Some past experiences: one of the local locations for NTB is a near disaster, and I forced them on one occasion to replace an installation-damaged alloy wheel on a '92 Integra I had years ago - natch, I don't take anything back to these "tire experts." I even had the local Acura dealer needing to refinish wheels on a CL after their less than careful tire installation job. So my luck is mixed, with dealers and tire shops often equally showing less care than needed to a "alloy-wheel friendly" installation. And of course, that's not even getting into issues of how well they actually do a decent wheel balance!

I have the opinion that many locations that will do the work for you also perform other work that is considered more technical and skilled, ergo, you often have the less experienced or less skilled techs doing tire installations. And the job they do can then suffer. So with all that said, what are the general approaches followed by this group? I know Tire Rack has their list on preferred installers, and I am cautiously optimistic that one of these guys who performed my first rear tire replacement on my S2K seems to have done the job in a fairly wheel-friendly way. Opinions?

dshea

I look for the places with multiple Porches parked outside.

Nobody

My experience is that the biggest shops with the highest volume can afford the best machinery. Good tire mount machine = no scratches, even if a goofball is working it.

Costco, believe it or not, has always been more than happy to install Tire-Rack's tires and only charges $8 for mount and balance. The only damage done to my rims? Greasy handprints.

Bret

I don't know who to suggest, but I can offer some advice to minimize the damage. When I need to get new tires on my S2000, I'm just going to take in the rims only. This way there is no possibility that they can damage my car in any way. I'll also be sure to point out to them before hand that the rims are perfect. I'll be putting the wheels back on so they can't screw up that either.

On my Altima I'll be replacing all four tires at once, so the S2000 plan won't work there. What I'll do is remove all of the hub caps so that they can't damage them. When I go to pick up the car I'll loosen and retighten each lug nut to the correct specification. This way I'm sure that they didn't screw up a stud and all of the nuts are tightened to the correct torque specification. NTB once cross threaded a nut on a car I had long ago and then didn't say anything about it. When I went to rotate the tires a few thousand miles later, the nut just went round and round but wouldn't come off.

S2quick4U

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Nobody
My experience is that the biggest shops with the highest volume can afford the best machinery.