[PizzaSlut]

Man, these past few weeks have sucked for me. My power steering pressure switch acted up, caused too much pressure in my power steering system and created havoc. I got that fixed for 1500 dollars and they also gave me a 4-wheel alignment. All was good, and last night the brake pad sensor light came on. Need new front brake pads and rotors, that's fine it had been 50k miles anyways. I get that done and come home and the front end is wobbling now, that's not good. I go to Discount Tire to get a free rotate and balance like normal, but the guy tells me that the outer part of the tire is too worn down so they can't rotate or balance and shouldn't even take them off of the wheel. Said that my alignment was out of whack for too long. I'm ticked ... I only have like 20k miles on the tires and they come with a 65k mile warranty. Dude was trying to give me a "deal" at 420 bucks for four new tires. My tires were perfectly fine a week ago!!!!

I don't know, has anybody ever heard of this? They just rotated them 2k miles ago and didn't have any problems with it then. I have kept up on my alignment, rotations, tire pressure and everything. I feel like I'm bending over and they aren't even having the courtesy to yell my name while I'm grabbing my ankles.

I'm going back to the place that just did my brakes to see what they can do. Maybe a wheel weight fell off or something, I don't know. My old rotor was the tiniest bit warped to where you could barely feel it when braking heavily, but that's nothing compared to this. Also, when the guy was showing me my front tires he was turning the front wheels and when I got in the car to leave the car was in park. This doesn't seem like something he should do to me.

 

[PizzaSlut]

Nevermind on the wobbling ... that was the new rotors being warped. They got two new ones, put them on and car is fine. I'm relieved for now, hehe.

Altho I still won't be doing business with Discount Tire anymore and am hoping that the idiots actions on trying to sping the front wheels of a FWD ATX that is in park doesn't cause any problems. If it does then I'll be talking to them.

 

[sonza68]

Next time you think you have a warped rotor problem, you may want to check out this thread. The solution may be much simpler than replacing or turning the rotors.

 

[CATerina]

Yes a f'ed up alignment can eat a tire in days.

 

[PizzaSlut]

The tires still have 8/32nds of tread after over 20k miles, tread is fine. Started at 10/32nds of tread so at that pace I'm going to be able to go like 80k miles. It's a part of the outer edge, not really tread on the tire. I talked to the VP at Discount Tire and he set up an appt. for me on Thursday where they'll either give me 4 new tires at 1/3 the normal cost or they'll get rotated and balanced as scheduled.

The warped rotor that I had was a brand new rotor. They got it from a Ford/Mercury dealership brand new and it happened to be warped. My old ones had worn down quite a bit so I expected to need the rotors replaced anyways.

 

[jec215]

The car was off the ground when the tires where spinning with it in park correct??? For your sake I hope so! Yes that is correct. It is the diff kicking in...if you noticed the other wheel should have been spinning the opposite direction that the dude was spinning the wheel. Good luck with your tires...

 

[PizzaSlut]

Yeh, I was relieved when I was taught that by the VP, haha. My only thought is that the stuff I use from time to time that foams to a shine on the tires left some nasty coloration that the dude mistook as a problem. Hopefully that's all it was. More info tomorrow.

 

[PizzaSlut]

Woohoo, everything's good now. Two tires were out of balance, the manager of the store checked everything out and said the tires are fine and safe (rebalanced all four). Two tires are low on tread, but he said and gave to me in writing that I can get those two replaced for 1/3 the normal price since I only have 20k miles on a tire with a 60k mile warranty.

In the future I may try the trick listed above for the supposed warped rotors.