Need your advice on a good inside automotive tire patch

Everybody who thinks they are somebody needs to own one bimmer, I Merc, one Porsche, 1 Audi, and 1 Caddilac for good measure.

"If you have to ask how much, you can't afford it"

Reply to
clare
Loading thread data ...

If your tires don't shake at any speed balancing only to the closest half ounce you are not very sensitive to shake or you don't drive very fast is all I can say.

Reply to
clare

When the spare is in the bottom of the trunk, and the trunk is full and it's too nasty to put everything in the trunk on the side of the road to get the spare out. Or when the spare is flat too.

A 12 volt compressor or a good manual tire pump is a lot better than canned air

Reply to
clare

CY: I had mixed results with HF. Most of the tools have worked fine.

CY: And the Aamco that finished rebuilding my TX. Problem was, it would not stay in park. I'd stop, put the shift in park, take my foot off the brake, and the vehicle rolls away. I took it back, and they gave me a story about how badly stretched was the linkage. I took it home, and find the two rods connect with a loop and bolt. Loosen the bolt, shift the loop about 3/8 inch, and the problem is solved. The Aamco shop could not do that? Nonsense.

CY: I wonder.

CY: Oh, sorry the hell for not commenting sooner the hell.

CY: Myself and many others have endured the Midas three level pricing.

1) phone. Oh, it sounds like $75 2) quote at the counter, double the phone quote. Gonna be $150. 3) Out the door price. Double the counter price. We had to replace some other parts, and the total came to $300.

CY: I can do toe sets, using either a long board and magic marker. Or if I have second worker, a tape measure.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

CY: I had a five spark plug tuneup, one time. They were honest enough to tell me about it. "in pretty tight". Some time later, I went after the spark plug which wasn't too hard to change, after the wheel was off and push the mud flap up. A couple weeks ago, I did an eight plug tune up on my van. That did wonders. Ought to done that years ago. The guy across the street from me kept telling me how miserable a job it was, and I'd best let him do it. He kept being sick or unavailable, and finally I just started the job my self.

CY: I'd have to agree with that. Real shame the honest ones retire.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Makes you wonder if the tune up before that was also a 7 plug tune up? Could have been a rather ancient spark plug.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I bought the extended warranty for the reason I gave that AWD Subaru requires all 4 tires be equal. The dealer also gave free lifetime rotation.

I'm going to trade it in a a couple of months and break free of the service/dealer as every time I take it in for an oil change and free rotation he looks for all kinds of things to do.

Reply to
Frank

On some tires it helped - on others it made it worse. Dynamic balancing balances the tire not only around the circumference bur from bead to bead - across the tread - and it does this inner to outer ballance at every point around the circumference of the tire. A tire can be statically ballanced and "wobble" like crazy, even though it does not "tramp".. It is more important on wheels with a large offset, either positive or negative, because the moving impalance is farther from the point where the contact patch and the steering axis meet.

Reply to
clare

Frank wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 19:41:28 -0500:

What does 'equal' mean?

All tires should be "equal" with respect to size, brand, & tread pattern. It's just plain ghetto to have different tires on the same axle even. You shouldn't even have appreciably different wear on them.

So, I don't know what you've been drinking that makes Subaru any different than any other vehicle.

Those Subaru Marketing teams have you snowed I think.

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:24:03 -0500:

I only have experience with a sum total of five (5) tires. And, so far, they've balanced just fine with my HF static balancer. As I said, I have BBS wheels (standard BMW issue) so maybe that plays a role. Also, the 5 tires were all bought at the same time from Tire Rack. Dunno if that has an effect at all (probably not). I removed all the weights first. I then balanced them (none needed more than a short strip of weights). Pretty much that was it.

Car never vibrated. If it did, I'd take it to the shop. But it didn't.

Reply to
Danny D.

Stormin Mormon wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:54:17 -0500:

I made a toe measurement tool out of pipe.

One long pipe to go parallel to the axle and two side pipes that are perpendicular and which slide along the pipe and clamp in place.

Then I just measure the distance from the center of the tread to the center of the tread.

Some alignment numbers are defined from the center of the vehicle, which means I have a bit of slop since mine only measures total toe and not center-out toe.

Toe is as easy as twisting the tie rod ends equally on both sides in opposite directions.

The hardest part is making a toe plate that spins freely while the car's weight is sitting on each wheel.

Camber isn't too hard because you can make a faceplate for the wheels bolted onto the lug bolt holes (Bimmers have lug bolts, not lug nuts). The faceplate pushes out further than the tire so that you can measure the camber angle to a tenth of a degree with a level.

Caster is a bit too difficult, but, in the case of the bimmer, only front toe and rear toe & camber are adjustable anyway.

One problem is that you have to set a bimmer to something called "normal ride height" which is anything but normal. It's a height that happens only when you add over 500 pounds of weight, evenly distributed throughout the front & back seats and the trunk (in addition to 18 gallons of gas).

Most bimmer alignments are done wrong, that is, without first setting ride height, so the camber is off by a few degrees (and it's supposed to be negative 2 degrees in the rear, which is a hellova lot).

The problem here is similar to the changing tire problem. Most people don't *know* how to do the job, so, the mechanics almost always skimp (I mean, how many even *have* 500 pounds of weight lying around?).

They know better. They just know their customer doesn't know any better. So, they cheat.

The customer loses.

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:29:04 -0500:

That was the beemer dealer.

But both bimmer and beemer dealers (which are usually under different ownership) screw you.

They don't call 'em stealers for nothin'.

Only three things you get/do at the stealer:

  1. Warranty work
  2. Recall work
  3. Oddball parts you need this very moment
Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:36:19 -0500:

Maybe both are true.

I am not all that sensitive to anything (watch when people try to insult me, for example). And I don't go yelling out the window at someone who talks on their cellphone or who cuts me off. I just ignore them.

I also don't drive all that fast. Maybe 80 to 85 on the highway at most, which, as you know, is nothing on a California highway (I don't call 'em freeways 'cuz they're not free - CA has the highest gas tax in the nation).

Plus, I balanced them really well.

I have nothing against dynamic balancing except that it's not always needed. That's all.

If you mount and balance your own tires, the only thing that is hard to do is the dynamic balancing. Everything else is trivially easy to do at home. And cheap. All the tools cost less than one visit to the shop.

Reply to
Danny D.

Tony Hwang wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 13:42:18 -0700:

I have a bimmer. Older E39 model. Rides fine with the five tires I mounted and balanced myself with this.

HF Mounter:

formatting link
HF Balancer:
formatting link
I go about 80 or 85 on California highways which are some of the best maintained roads in the country as far as I can tell (having come from the east coast where the roads are lousy as all hell).

No vibration, but, I did a very good job of balancing them. I think maybe the BBS aluminum wheels made it easier?

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:38:42 -0500:

Probably true.

  1. The advantage of canned air is that sealant is often included, and it doesn't require electricity and it's small but it goes bad over time.

  1. The advantage of a compressor is that it doesn't go bad over time but it's much larger and it requires electricity (which is usually ok except the cigarette lighter is FAR away from the rear tires if you keep the wheels on the car). On a bimmer, the battery is far from the front axle. On most cars, it's the opposite, but you still have that problem.

  2. The advantage of a hose that goes from one side of one axle to the other side of the other axle is that it's small, it never goes bad, but it does suck some air out of the other three tires. If you're lucky, you can suck air out of someone else's tires! :)

The main disadvantage is that you have to make it out of a hose and two chucks, one of which has to latch on and the other has to have some way of shutting off (which most chucks do). The biggest problem is that the chucks are usually pretty big, so that necessitates a bigger hose than you want (or need) to store.

My plan is to build a long thin hose, with two hoses on the end that are thicker which contain the two chucks. Dunno if it would work though, as I don't know how much air you have to scavenge from three other tires to fill up one tire.

Of course, in a parking lot, there are lots of tires ... :)

Reply to
Danny D.

Ralph Mowery wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 17:39:38 -0500:

I wonder how long it would take to fill a tire with those small bicycle pumps?

It takes about a hundred pumps to fill a bicycle tire.

Whaddya think? About 1,000 pumps?

Reply to
Danny D.

clare wrote, on Mon, 07 Dec 2015 15:30:26 -0500:

My plan is to take up Wheel Works on their offer of a free mushroom patch. I still can't believe that it's free.

I meant to go today, but, when I moved the car onto a flat area, I left the key in the ignition, so the bimmer never went to sleep.

Dunno why that killed the battery - but it did. So it's on the trickle charger as we speak, so, tomorrow I'll take Wheel Works up on their offer of a free mushroom patch.

I still can't believe they're free - so - tomorrow I'll let you know what happens.

Reply to
Danny D.

Wow, 60 posts on "advise to patch a tire". Must be a very complicated repair.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

It's a lot more important on cars with all wheel drive and fancy stability/traction control.

They were NOT snowing him.

Reply to
clare

You were lucky and got a set that didn't really need much balancing. My guess? Continentals or some other tire that lists at $200 or so each.. And you got lucky that they needed a multiple of 1/2 ounce to balance out.

You get a tire that needs 1.75 to 2 ounces to static, and it may need

4 to dynamic balance it. You might have 1.5 on the outside at one spot, and half way around the tire another 2.5 to 3 on the inside.

Get that on the front of a twitchy little sedam like a BMW320 with only a static ballance, and your hands will get a good massage from the steering wheel, even if the bumper doesn't jump.

Reply to
clare

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.