New wheels, new tires, go to Sears, service person averages 3 smoke breaks in 1 hour, near 3 hours to mount 4 tires, still not feeling confident about balancing job. Does that about sum it up? I knwo that going to Sears was probably my first mistake, but that had the tires I wanted in stock. So I figured that while I was there I could have them mount everything. We dropped the rims and tires off and leave to go do some shopping to kill time. We come back just over an hour later and only 2 tires are on the rims and they say that they need to still play with one of them to get it balanced right. We go shopping some more. Come back and those first 2 are done but the now they are having probs with the 3rd. The folks there are offering excuses, first saying that the rims are bad, then saying that the tires are bad. Then I see someone come over and show the shop person that they are not using the correct spacer on the tire balancer. Now I am thinking that it is not the wheels or tires but the genius running the maching. Because now 2 tires are balanced in less than 15 minutes. But in case I am wrong, what are the chances that 2 BF Goodrich drag radials and 2 BF Goodrich Radial TAs, all brand new, will not balance well on brand new CNC'd aluminum rims? I am going to another shop to have things double checked and am trying to get a hold of the Sears customer service dept. $700 on rims and $450 on tires, and I am affraid to use them.

That is absolutley ridiculous. I work at Discount Tire, and I can tell you that I personally, can do all 4 wheels and tires, balanced, on the car ready to go in 20 min. A friend and I at work were having fun one day seeing how fast we could knock out cars before we just died from exhaustion (you can do stuff like this when youre young http://www.chevelles.com/forum/smile.gif )Anyway, we got our time down to 6 minutes fom the time the car came off the ground, until it was ready to drive out.

You have every right to be p*ssed at these guys. Either they really dont knat theyre doing, or theyre jerkin you around.
Those brand new wheels and tires should balance very easily.
I would most definately take your stuff somewhere else. I may be a bit biased, but if you have a discount tire near you, you might check 'em out.

Good luck, and be safe
-Matt

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TC Member #1434
1971 Malibu 383 (http://www.chevelles.com/showroom/mattleuckmotor.jpg), 200-4R
"It's not how much blood and sweat it took to get there, it's whether or not you have what it takes to finish it."

The ABSOLUTE last time I bought a tire at Sears was about 20 years ago.. they were busy so the manager installed 4 new tires on my old 4wd Blazer (avtually all he did was put them on the truck, someone else had already mounted them on the wheels). I got about 2 miles for the store and heard a noise, when I got out I found I was down to 2 lugs (out of 6), the idot had stripped all 6 bolts by starting them with the impact!

Never again...

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Rod

67 396
SS clone

Daddy's Red Car (http://www.geocities.com/rthlc/index)

Don't you just hate paying people to .... .. your stuff?