GraniteCrystal
New member
It saddens me to write this, but after a company (maybe it's just one location?) repeatedly fails to perform the most simple of tasks in such a way as to put myself and my family in danger, I feel compelled to change who I do business with.
As those who follow my build thread will remember, the last time I took my Jeep to Discount Tire to have them rotate the tires, they didn't properly tighten the spare tire. There are three bolts on the spare tire and two of them I could actually unscrew with my fingers. Scary stuff when you consider a 37" tire bouncing off the back of the Jeep at 70mph going down the freeway. I called up DT after the incident and told them my findings and reminded them that there job is not one to take lightly and this stuff matters. They agreed they'd bring it up in their next staff meeting.
Yesterday I took my Jeep in again. Same location. Asked them to balance and rotate tires, asked them to ensure that all lug nuts would be properly torqed to 95 ft-lbs. They assured me they would. I came back and picked it up later that day. Drove it home two miles and went straight to the torque wrench. Put it on one of the lugs of the passenger front tire. 95 ft-lbs. Click. 100 ft-lbs. Click. And on up until I was at 115 ft-lbs and it still wasn't turning it at all. I did a few with similar results. They had all been over torqued. I loosened them all, then re-torqued them to the proper 95 ft-lbs.
Today I drove it a bit farther to church. On the highway, the TPMS light comes on. I thought that odd, so when we came out of church, I checked the pressure on driver front tire. 37 psi. Holy crap! So DT took it upon themselves to fill up my 37" Coopers to 37 psi. But wait...not all of them. Nope, the passenger side rear they put at 21 psi. Just for fun I guess. I ended up spending 10 mins in the parking lots airing 3 of them down from 37 psi and one them up till all were back to 26psi. Even the spare was over-aired. Glad I have ARB dual compressor.
Lesson learned: I'll never go back to DT. Torque and tire pressure are super simple tasks that have big ramifications. It's important to get these right and there is no excuse for not doing so. I'll be doing my own rotations from now on and trying to go somewhere else to get them balanced.
As those who follow my build thread will remember, the last time I took my Jeep to Discount Tire to have them rotate the tires, they didn't properly tighten the spare tire. There are three bolts on the spare tire and two of them I could actually unscrew with my fingers. Scary stuff when you consider a 37" tire bouncing off the back of the Jeep at 70mph going down the freeway. I called up DT after the incident and told them my findings and reminded them that there job is not one to take lightly and this stuff matters. They agreed they'd bring it up in their next staff meeting.
Yesterday I took my Jeep in again. Same location. Asked them to balance and rotate tires, asked them to ensure that all lug nuts would be properly torqed to 95 ft-lbs. They assured me they would. I came back and picked it up later that day. Drove it home two miles and went straight to the torque wrench. Put it on one of the lugs of the passenger front tire. 95 ft-lbs. Click. 100 ft-lbs. Click. And on up until I was at 115 ft-lbs and it still wasn't turning it at all. I did a few with similar results. They had all been over torqued. I loosened them all, then re-torqued them to the proper 95 ft-lbs.
Today I drove it a bit farther to church. On the highway, the TPMS light comes on. I thought that odd, so when we came out of church, I checked the pressure on driver front tire. 37 psi. Holy crap! So DT took it upon themselves to fill up my 37" Coopers to 37 psi. But wait...not all of them. Nope, the passenger side rear they put at 21 psi. Just for fun I guess. I ended up spending 10 mins in the parking lots airing 3 of them down from 37 psi and one them up till all were back to 26psi. Even the spare was over-aired. Glad I have ARB dual compressor.
Lesson learned: I'll never go back to DT. Torque and tire pressure are super simple tasks that have big ramifications. It's important to get these right and there is no excuse for not doing so. I'll be doing my own rotations from now on and trying to go somewhere else to get them balanced.