I'm a guy, so my wallet is in a pants pocket instead of buried inside a > purse. It's easier and more reliable to carry the vaccination card in > my wallet than to have it accessed from a phone which is likely locked, > could be powered off, especially when near the end of battery life > waiting until I can get a charge, or its battery is dead. I still read > paper books, too.
Well I still read paper books too, but having the digital vaccination card is actually a big plus around here. In the places that actually check, they can scan the QR code and match the results to your ID.
The number of times I've been asked for proof of vaccination is very low but we weren't going to restaurants in San Francisco where they were requiring it.
I actually had the digital proof on my iPhone before Apple officially supported it (beginning with iOS 15.1). I used a third-party app, "Pass2U"
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and it was a bit of a hassle to get the digital card loaded but it did work. That app isn't as good as the Android equivalent "Pass2Pay"
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. I'm trying to not have a super-thick wallet by removing cards that are not necessary to be carrying.
I'm the type that relies first on physical over electronic. That's why I have probably a couple hundred pounds of tools and emergency gear in my car rather than relying on calling AAA whose services can get swamped during extreme bad weather, require my phone to be working, and within usable distance of a cell tower that contracts to my carrier. But I know lots, if not the vast majority, don't carry all that mostly because they wouldn't know how to repair anything or can't/won't do anything physical. I have AAA, but realize from experience that it isn't always usable, so I have physical self-reliance.
As for my wallet, I'd still be carrying the coated card in my wallet even if it were available on my phone. There are credit cards that remain in my home desk drawer, because they never get used when mobile, just for online purchases. I don't like sitting at a slant, and don't have a fat butt as a cushion. Easier to keep down on the paper cash.
I'm similar to Vanguard in that I rely on the confidence of self reliance; however, we have wives and kids and grandkids, etc., who need that AAA card.
Personally, I've found that you can "share" the AAA card, as the only entity that seems to care if it's "you" calling is AAA but not the truck driver who arrives (he just wants to get paid by AAA in the end so he'll take anyone). (at least in my experience anyway)
When a kid gets their first car, I generally gift them a "safety kit", which contains, oh, offhand, from memory, the following dozen or so safety items:
HF magnetic light (AA only - I never buy AAA items - ever!)
sometimes an ice scraper & sometimes a quart of motor oil (for old cars)
Some kind of zippered strong cloth bag (I get them at the Goodwill)
Did I miss anything that you would highly recommend that's in your kit? (It's always a balance of size versus likelihood of dire need of course.)
I used to add a halon fire extinguisher, paper maps, two flares with nails, two foldable triangle reflectors, a spare phone & a spare camera, but each of those turns out to be more trouble than it's worth, particularly the flares (which crumble over time) and the reflectors (which blow away in the wind if they're small enough to be convenient).
The _best_ thing to have in your kit, is the knowledge that you likely have, and that I certainly have, of how each of the systems work in a vehicle (drive train, starting & charging, cooling, steering, braking, etc.) in that my cars, by design, are older than my children (who are married with kids), since that's the last time I bought a new car and none of my vehicles have _ever_ been to a mechanic (I even do alignment and tire mounting & balancing at home) - but I would assume most people don't know what we know.
As an OT aside, I _love_ the inherent confidence that my deep knowledge of "working on a car" gives us in terms of the ability to fix almost anything at the point of failure (or, if it's unfixable, such as a broken axle, then, in California, a 511 call will get you off the highway for free, and that shared AAA card can get you five further miles for free, and then you pay for whatever is left but at least you'll be safely off the highway).
The good news is cars are simpler to maintain now than ever before, just as phones are better, faster, and far cheaper now than they've ever been.
Some drivers are more persnickety. I drive old beaters, and I usually use a few of my AAA tows per year. It's well worth it to pay for the middle tier of AAA with up to four 100 mile tows.
Why no AAA batteries?
I usually keep multiple car fluids on hand. Premixed gallon of coolant, at least a quart of oil, and P/S fluid (maybe ATF). Of course, again, I drive old cars, that tend to spring leaks.
I'd love to have a machine to mount and balance my own tires. I fix most things on cars myself, and there is a satisfaction to that (although it's also relevant to cheap/necessity for me).
A static wheel balancer is pretty inexpensive but it's not really a good idea to use one on tires that will be operated at high speed. A manual tire changer is also pretty cheap, under $100. But by the time you pay retail prices for the weights, and pay for the equipment cost, you'd be able to pay for a lot of wheel balancing before you achieved a positive ROI, and you would not have tires that are properly balanced after all that. A dynamic wheel balancer is over $1000 for a very basic model from China.
I rarely drive over 60 MPH. I've mounted little 12/13 inch Geo Metro wheels and just sent them without balancing at all before; so a cheap one would be good enough for most of my purposes. I drive old beater cars, and I currently own 10 (or 11?) of them.
When you say a "static" balancer, do you mean a bubble balancer? I've seen some used shop equipment come up for sale on FB Marketplace and Craigslist before, still usually out of my preferred price range (cheap).
The problem that anyone who has never worked on cars has with the term "dynamic balancing" is they fall prey to the fear-based marketing.
Just as with Apple marketing always aiming that people quaking in their boots, so does tire & brake repair, replace, mount & repair marketing.
Dynamic balance is almost always not needed _if_... and the _if_ is what matters, but luckily, the _if_ is (in my experience) almost all the time.
Needless to day, the _test_ for lack of dynamic balance is always free!
Just as I've (almost) never failed to solve computer issues, I've (almost) never failed to solve car-repair issues (and my cars are _decades_ old!).
I've written tutorials for how to mount and balance your tires at home.
Out here, Harbor Freight sells a crappy tire dismount/mount tool which you _must_ bolt to the ground, and then you remove the even crappier bead breaker, and then it's an OK tool for tires up to around 18 inches.
Harbor Freight also sells a crappy bead breaker tool, which isn't designed for larger tires, but which works for those bigger SUV tires if you put a wooden board on it to "extend" its base as you step on the board to keep the bead breaker from tipping backward on those larger diameter tires.
The Harbor Freight static balancer, which is also crappy, is just a bubble balander so it doesn't matter as long as the wheel is placed centrally.
The only other tools needed to mount and balance your tires at home are extra HF tire irons (for the larger SUV tires), vise grips (because the HF
3-foot-long round-bar tire iron twists in your hands on those larger tires), a pair of dikes (to cut the old valve stem) and a valve core removal twist driver (for removal & replacement of the valve cores).
It's helpful (but not required) to have a bead blaster, aka a bazooka.
Most things that require AAA don't actually _need_ AAA (this is key!) (The assumption that they're "smaller" very often is just not true.)
AAA cost about the same as AA which means they cost twice as much. (another way to look at it is they last half as long)
Eliminating one battery size reduces the amount of storage in my battery drawer of Costco sizes of D, C, AA, and 9V batteries.
Fun fact: Did you ever take apart a 9V battery cube? (Guess what's inside.)
Understood. I have a shelf of all that (and more) where I'm a practical guy, which means if brake fluid works as well or better than liquid wrench, I store the brake fluid and not the liquid wrench on my garage shelves.
BTW, a _fantastic_ resource for an intelligent practical sensible guy who tests all the automotive fluids against each other, is "Project Farm"
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Bear in mind, when it comes to falling prey to marketing, most people are incredibly stupid. Automotive liquids are even worse than Apple on that.
I saw Steve's response, but just like you can't logically ask a thin person how to lose a hundred pounds (because they really do not know how - they simply "think" they do becasue they never had to actually do it), Steve is dead wrong in _every_ sentence he said about it (and trust me, if Steve said it correctly, I'd say he was right - but he's never done it himself).
For _years_ I've been documenting my, oh, it's well over sixty tires by now, where I wrote a tutorial at the 40-tire mark long ago (I don't have kids at home anymore that have cars to be fixed with them learning how).
The tools pay for themselves after only a couple of years of changing tires on a multi-car family set of tires, where, luckily for us in the USA, Harbor Freight sells a crappy tire tool for everything you need.
Notice what I said. Nobody loves HF tools - but - they work - and that's what matters. Just as a home owner doesn't need a $100K Hunter alignment rack, to properly balance your wheels/tires at home is trivial to do.
The "speed" thing Steve mentioned is bullshit since they're not properly balanced if they cause vibration at any speed - where again - Steve falls prey to the marketing of fear more than he falls prey to actual logic.
Dynamic balancing tests are _always_ free, and, after that, if you need dynamic balancing, last I checked it costs $5/tire for that - but - I've _never_ yet needed dynamic balancing (notice the word "need" there).
BTW, I'm logical and sensible, so if there is _anything_ I've suggested above that you would like to understand the logic of, then just ask.
I have never been to a mechanic in my life and I own cars for decades.
Just as with computers I fix everything myself using the tool that evolved from being monkeys swinging from trees and having to gauge the distance to the next branch and having to calculate how it will hold up, I've been able to fix cars simply by making sensible sane choices (and, oh, by the way, I have _two_ BMWs, one a K1200 and the other a 525, so you can't say that they don't break a lot).
On the BMW forums, I'm a legend, but of course I go by a different nym.
. Even at 60 MPH you really should be properly balancing your tires. At Costco, mounting, lifetime-balancing, rotation, road hazard warranty, and nitro-fill, is about $19.
How is it you're so consistently an idiot about everything?
AAA batteries are 44.5mm tall by 10.5mm in diameter
AA batteries are 50.5mm tall by 14.mm in diameter.
AAA batteries are always physically smaller than AA batteries and devices that are designed to take AAA batteries will pretty much NEVER accept an AA battery.
Wow. Wrong again!
And if you have devices that need AAA batteries?
Not AAA batteries.
Some do use cylindrical cells that are close in size to an AAAA battery, but some 9-volt batteries don't have cylindrical cells in them at all.
As Steve noted, Harbor Freight sells crappy tools that get the job done.
Just as you can buy an expensive smartphone or a cheap one, and for the most part, they both do exactly the same things (mostly) in the end...
For example, just as Google & Apple sell expensive tools, so does Lowes:
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But it would take a typical homeowner a few lifetimes of changing tires at home to offset the cost (& storage requirements) of such an expensive set.
Yet for the price of about three or four years of typical tire changing (at least in twisty steep mountain roads which eat up tires due to downhill inside-tire camber scrub as a rusult of the typical slight positive caster) you can buy the cheap (but effective) Harbor Freight tire-changing tools.
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Ask me how I know this (and yes, I _did_ write the tutorial for that too!).
It's (clever) Marketing's job to make most people pay to _feel_ safer.
Remember always that MARKETING scares the shit out of stupid people who actually _believe_ that you can't "properly" mount & balance tires at home.
The only people who say that crap are those (a) selling you a service, or, on Usenet, those (b) who have _never_ (ever!) done what they talk about.
Rest assured I _have_ mounted and balanced over sixty tires for a variety of vehicles, up to and including 17 inch SUV tires (which are a bitch).
It's easy. More importantly, it's easy to do properly. Ask me how I know this.
HINT: If you've never done it, what you think you know... is wrong. WHY? (easy) Because what you know is only what you're _told_ by marketing. [Notice the parallels with the iKooks yet?]
As with Apple marketing, scaring the shit out of morons is how they make all their money, where you don't need dynamic balancing if you don't need it (and where the test for proper dynamic balance is _always_ free!).
As I said, the speed doesn't matter. There is only one "properly mounted and balanced" tire result, just as there's only properly repaired tire puncture... where the definition of "properly" includes _all_ valid speeds.
I doubt Steve has ever properly mounted & balanced car/SUV tires; I have.
Unfortunately for you, Steve doesn't know what he's talking about here. (Remember, he's never done it. He's just going on the marketing claims.)
Nitro-fill is a gimmick, much like Apple's face-id is a marketing gimmick.
And the Costco "lifetime" deal is actually a farce, it turns out, where the Lord knows I love Costco, but... they lied about that lifetime balancing, at least in terms of our "extreme" use high up in the Santa Cruz mountains.
Xeno can explain in gory detail, but the simplest way to explain it is that they don't count "extreme use" which, fun fact... it turns out that steep mountain roads are (see aforementioned scrub radius tire wear issues).
While I love Costco for some things (I purposefully filled a hundred gallons of their top-tier fuel for example just prior to the invasion), they only sell certain brands (Goodyear, Bridgestone, etc.) where I get my tires from SimpleTire (free shipping - which - for tires - is a lot!) so that I can choose _any_ brand & model I want (TireRack is OK too).
The road hazard stuff is fine, but see the "extreme" use clause, and, besides, once you can mount & balance tires at home, patch plugs are easy.
Did I mention yet that dynamic balance tests are _always_ free?
If, perchance, you fail the dynamic balance test, last I checked, Costco will do a dynamic balance for $5 even on tires you didn't buy from them.
In summary, I love a good deal as much as anyone, but Costco isn't as good as the marketing would have you believe they are - but I still love Costo.
One negative about Costco's tire center. lately, is that they are understaffed. A couple of months ago, one tire on my wife's car blew out and I took the wheel and tire there for replacement since it wasn't repairable. It took about six hours to get the tire replaced. There was no hassle about the road hazard coverage, though it's pro-rated based on tread life. Another issue with Costco is that they only carry tires from two manufacturers: Michelin/BF Goodrich and Bridgestone, but for most people that's sufficient.
If you mount and balance tires yourself there's no warranty at all. If you buy tires online from a place like Tire Rack there is no treadlife warranty or road hazard coverage, only a warranty against manufacturer's defects.
BTW, Costco has free nitrogen fill available outside their tire centers. Most tire places charge extra for nitrogen fill. Nitrogen fill has a couple of advantages, the main one being that since the nitrogen molecules are larger the gas leaks out more slowly than tires filled with plain air. Since many drivers never check their tire pressure, this is a big plus!
I agree with Steve in that I used to have Costco, Midas, Goodyear, etc., mount and balance my tires, even in the days I bought them from Tire Rack, and they all take more time than you might think they should, from the time you leave the house until the time you get back (which is what matters).
The Costco tire dept historically has had a long line, even at its opening time, which was, as I recall, earlier than the store (back in the day).
While this next statement delves into the concept of "proper", there are common industry rules for what tires are repairable & what tires are not.
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However...
If you repair your own tires, you can choose _how_ and _what_ to use, where a professional will _not_ repair a tire "some" of those ways that you can.
An example is if there is any black dust inside the casing, even if there is no other indicator, they won't repair the tire (for good reasons).
But you can.
There are _many_ other example, such as the number of existing patches, the location of the puncture, the size and shape of the wound, the type of existing patches, the tread depth, etc.
As a VERY COMMON EXAMPLE, a _lot_ of people use an _external_ repair for punctures, especially when on the road - where the rules are that tire cannot ever be repaird by a professional following the standard rules.
Yet you can repair it yourself (note that under the old rules it was perfectly acceptable I'm told, but under the new industry rules it is not).
While that's unusual, it couldn't take less than a "couple" of hours to get your tires replaced anywhere, if you count the time from when you leave the house to the time you return - which is the time that matters when you are comparing it to doing it yourself - which would be from the time you start to get dressed to the time you step out of the shower in terms of mounting and balancing your own tires (there's also that free dynamic balance test).
The tread, actually the evenness of the wear, is the problem in mountains.
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Cause for uneven tread wear
As I mentioned, Costco is a fine outfit. Reputable. Honest. Reliable.
But Steve doesn't live in the mountains. Essentially that guarrantee is worthless if you live in the mountains. We've covered this many times on the auto newsgroup (with scores of photos) so just trust me on this fact. Santa Cruz Mts BMW
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Santa Cruz Mts LEXUS
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Santa Cruz Mts TOYOTA
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Ah. I mispoke. I'm surprised Steve didn't call me out on that misrepresentation of fact. I knew Costco only carried two brands, but offhand, I had one of them wrong. Steve is correct on the brands (AFAIR).
Bear in mind every year, at least once a year (ofen in August?) Costco has a $100 off sale - which isn't any big deal as you can get better tires for less - but if you're gonna go to Costco - then the sale could be good news.
Actually that's wrong. The original tire warranty still remains in force. The onus of documentation is up to you - that's all.
Bear in mind even Costco technically requires alignment documentation.
Bullshit.
Remember my analogy that a thin person doesn't know how to lose 100 pounds even as they _think_ they do... simply because they've never done it?
Well, Steve has never done what I've done which is buy tires from reliable folks like Simple Tire, and wear them out "prematurely" (see the mountain road argument as to why).
The reputable tire supply houses tires are covered by the original manufacturer's warranty. It's no different than Costco's tire warranty I would think (although we could compare the details at a later date).
I wonder if Steve knows the answer to this question which I know the answer to.
How do you _think_ Costco "gets" that nitrogen? ... Think about that... ... Think again... ... And again...
Where does Steve _think_ that "nigrogen" comes from that Costco uses? HINT: It's not what you'd think.
Costco is great, but Nitrogen fill is a marketing gimmick much like Face ID is a marketing gimmick.
It serves one main purpose which is to _differentiate_ their "air" from someone elses' air. Nothing more than that.
Green caps are brilliant marketing ploys... but any _adult_ would realize that the nitrogen in tires is a gimmick if they simply knew what it is.
Those green caps are no different than similar Apple marketing gimmicks.
It's a gimmick. It's not pure nitrogen in the first place, but even that doesn't matter because the difference is essentially meaningless.
The whole point of the gimmick is to be able to differentiate just like Apple's whole "environmental" stance is simply to "sound" different.
Hey... guess what... I'm more environmentally sound than almost all of you most likely because I can eke out tires longer than you can under the same conditions since I can repair more tires than you can for longer than you can (given your shops won't repair what I can and do repair all the time).
One more thing that you GAIN by DIY maintenance & repair is that you can do MORE of it ...again, that means that _uneven_ wear can be overcome simply by _flipping_ the tires on the wheels (not all tires have non-directional treads - but most do).
Here's a direct cut and paste from a previous post from years ago on that.
For example, in these steep curvy Santa Cruz Mountains roadways, we all burn though front tires on their _outside_ edges
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due to what Xeno & Clare have explained is likely camber scrub:
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where the effect is noticeable on front tires in a few thousand miles
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and, where close observation shows the effect in only hundreds of miles
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such that one side of the tire is worn while the other half is fine
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and where frequent tire rotation only resolves half the problem
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Since the tire is still rotating in the same direction on the wheel.
While there are amelioration techniques that Xeno & Clare have outlined such as lessening positive front caster, the wear is due to the un-natural positive camber that the inside wheel takes on sharp turns:
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such that the inside front wheel outside corner takes the brunt of it
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meaning there's only so much you can play with in terms of home alignment
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given it's always going to wear the outside edge of the front tires
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The simplest solution, which most people never do, would be to FLIP the wheels on the rim at the normal 5,000 mile rotation point.
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If you don't know how to flip a tire on the rim in a few minutes, you likely won't do it, since it would cost $20 per rotation which is $100 just to flip the tires (even Costco charges for flipping tires on the rim, even if you bought the tires from them and had them initially mount them).
Since it would cost more than the tires to flip them every 5000 miles on the rim, doing the work at home is not only fun and convenient, but, doing the work at home means you will be saving tires from the landfill which is the environmental friendly thing to do.
In summary, not only is it fun and convenient to DIY at home, but it enables you to minimize the impact on the environment because you can do things that few people would do if they couldn't do them easily at home.
Seriously though, while I would not pay extra for nitrogen fill, since it's included with tire installation at Costco, I'll take it.
Costco actually has a vested interest in using nitrogen because they include a road hazard warranty at no extra cost, and because they actually honor tread wear warranties (many tire stores will find any excuse possible to avoid honoring warranties). Nitrogen fill means fewer tires operating at low pressure and fewer warranty claims.
Andy can educate himself about nitrogen-fill for tires here:
If you have to drive somewhere special to top up your tires you're paying extra with your time and trouble. I do my (normal air) top-ups in the comfort of my own garage...
Yup. They get you to come down to their store to fill up...
My tire dealer does that too. And no annual fee.
If I get a puncture, nitrogen leaks out just like good old air. (And BTW both my cars will warn me if a tire gets low. YMMV.) Otherwise I seldom see more than a pound or two pound change when checking every month and often no change at all...
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