Just OT junk

[jmair at urbanout.com (Joe Mair)]

It's so funny that you had some tire drama on Friday.  I also had quite
a dilemma on my hands on Friday.  It seems that my front d/s tire had
developed some sort of leak.  I had stopped by a local mom-n-pop tire
shop in South Philly (excuse me, "souf filley") to see if they could
throw a quick and easy plug in the hole.  Yep, small nail was deep in
the tread, it was an easy in-and-out.  Well, three days later, the tire
looks low.  I fill it up, and three days later the same thing.

So, on Friday I make a call to a Firestone that used to employ a couple
of my acquaintances.  Unfortunately, they were no longer in their
employ, but since they do a full dismount, patch and remount for $20, I
decided to go for it anyway.  The tires are only 6 months old.  I left
work a bit early, and headed to the shop.  I dropped it off with a kind
gentleman who estimated an hour to finish.  So, I walk through the
campuses of Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania and
grab a coffee at a local coffee shop.  I walk back to the Firestone, see
that 30 minutes had elapsed, and they were just getting the Scirocco
loaded onto the lift.  So, I grab a seat in the parking lot, and watch
the bumbling begin.

First of all, it took the guy like 20 minutes to get ONE WHEEL removed
from the car.  I even took off the center cap so that they wouldn't lose
it or break it trying to figure out how to get it off.  When he finally
got it off, he spends about 15 minutes just looking for the puncture,
first visually, then in the tire bath looking for air bubbles.  The
finally locate it and dismount the tire.  The patch takes about 15
minutes, and then the idiocy begins anew.  I see about three people
huddling over my wheel at the mounting machine.  There are large
screwdrivers prying at the tire and they finally get it mounted only to
realize that it is a DIRECTIONAL tire (that's what those arrows at the
mark "<-ROTATION" means).

So, the tire is dismounted again and remounted correctly.  He starts
rolling it over to the car and I'm about to shout, "Hey, you forgot to
balance it!" when he must've realized the same thing and turns around to
take it to the balancing machine.  They finally get it finished, mounted
on the car, drop the Scirocco to the ground and park it over by the
door.  At this point, I realize that even though the wheel in question
had weights mounted on the inside of the wheel, and all three other
wheels had their weights in the same location, I see the weight mounted
on the outside edge of the wheel like a fucking Ford Taurus.

So, I politely go inside and talk to the kind gentleman at the counter.
Hi, I have the red VW Scirocco.  It looks like it is just about done.
One question for you: do you have the weights you can mount on the
inside of the wheel?  Oh, you do?  Great.  Can you please have them
re-balance the wheel?  All the rest of the wheels have them, and I'd to
preserve the clean look of the outside of the wheels.  Yeah, I know they
have to take the car back into the garage.  Thanks!"

What a mess.  Sure, it was only $20, but I had to waste two and a half
hours of my time.  Stupid idiots.  This is why I work on my own car.

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: C Boyko [mailto:roccit53@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 6:30 PM
To: scirocco-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Just OT junk

Well, thought I'd share. I have the best luck. So I recently got 8
snow tires, a set of 13s and a set of 16s. The 13" stuff's usually
straighforward to mount, and I rushed around in the miserable early
morning hours to scratch up a somewhat respectible set of
claws/tarantulas and loaded them out of the bug for the school shop to
mount and balance. They do this often, and it's never been an issue.
Well, I guess it IS possible to rip a 2" gash in the sidewall on the
machine. Of course it was one of the new tires, and I'll have an hour
drive to get its replacement. So I had my 16s done by a shop I deal
with a lot (not trusting the school with my alloys), and they seemed
more squirrelly than I remembered my previous new snows being. Well,
they're directionals, and the backs were put on wrong. No biggie, but
annoying. On a humourous stupid student side note, seems it's not a
good idea to light up a joint on the school bus if the bus driver
knows how to get to the cop shop...(my kids are so friggin'  brilliant
sometimes)
Cathy

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