What percentage of flat tires can be saved?

On May 01, 2023, rbowman wrote (in article<news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>):

Like anything, you need to know what it is that you're buying. Many people, unfortunately, buy only based on advertising. Or worse, they buy the expensive product thinking price equates to quality.

I get my motor oil in the five liter jugs at Costco on sale usually. Or Walmart. Or anywhere. All that matters is the API & SAE designations.

And the API designations, for my weather conditions, don't matter all that much, so it's only the API approvals, and those are almost always the same.

Same with my two strokes, although someone recently told me I shouldn't be using marine specified two-stroke oil - but I can't yet figure out why.

That's a case where I really do not know what it is that I am buying. Do you know better?

Ron, the humblest guy in town.

Why don't you wait until there is no pressure inside?

And risk shooting the valve-core into your eyeball?

On May 01, 2023, Cindy Hamilton wrote (in article<news:9GS3M.642584$ snipped-for-privacy@fx45.iad):

When it comes to working on your own vehicle, they do.

Oil is a commodity fluid, much like whole milk certainly is. Which whole milk do you buy? What's the difference between the other whole milks out the there?

If he's the one saying that the only metric of quality is price, then put him here instead of you speaking for him & I'll tell him what I told you.

I'd rather converse with rbowman who is actually trying to say something. It's you who is arrogant. You said price is the only quality metric.

I simply told you that motor oil is a commodity - price isn't a quality metric for commodities - the quality of the oil is the quality metric.

And that's stamped on every container.

You think I'm arrogant because you feel that the fact you know nothing about motor oils gives you the right to tell others that they're not commodities, while others here - who do know oils - don't say what you do.

People like you, who never know anything about what they're buying, always deprecate others who do know what it is that they're buying.

If you ask how I know you know nothing about motor oils, it's not only because you haven't mentioned a single quality metric about oils, but also because you equated price to quality which is always the mark of someone who knows nothing about what it is that they're buying.

People who know nothing of what they're buying, are the ones who buy by price because they inherently feel, instinctively, that price equates to quality. It might. It might not. It usually has nothing to do with quality.

It has more to do with advertising than anything else given oil is a commodity.

BTW, there's nothing wrong with you not knowing how to buy motor oils. What's wrong is you telling others how they should buy motor oils.

Nobody said you can't buy by price alone and not by quality. You're the one who said not to buy by quality but to buy by price.

On May 01, 2023, rbowman wrote (in article<news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>):

As far as I know, there is no such thing as "Kirkland" in terms of manufacturing, so they get it from 'someone' and sell it as an off brand.

I don't disagree that a quart was a useful size, where at worst, you had a portion of a quart left over to use as the inevitable topping up fluid.

Like many automotive parts such as tires, brake pads, rotors, oils, coolants, etc., there are forever "what oil" threads on the forums.

Inevitably, those who read the advertising are the ones who swear by the Michelin tires, or the "ceramic" pads or the drilled/slotted rotors, or the Mobil oils or the "blue" coolants (blue, red & green - they're "similar").

Yes, I know they're not "exactly" the same, but the engines that the oil & coolants are used in are essentially the same, and the water supply used to dilute the coolant varies by location, so whether it's blue, green or red doesn't really matter (I don't like to mix them though - that's my main rule but I only do that out of fear - as you can mix types of oils I'm told).

Do you mix oils? I generally try not to.

It would be nice to know what refinery Kirkland uses, but I already know the marketing tricks because I've studied gasoline. The local Shell refinery can sell to all the local gas stations, where they "mix" the additives every so slightly differently - a bit more poly ether amines here, a bit less ethanol there, etc., and that way they can legally claim the fuel is different.

But gasoline is a commodity. If it's top tier, it's good enough for me.

What about for you?

Ron, the humblest guy in town.

On May 01, 2023, Scott Lurndal wrote (in article<news:aBT3M.2871698$ snipped-for-privacy@fx15.iad):

I have to agree. A real lift is a few thousand dollars.

Boy oh boy. Which one of us would NOT love to have one of those babies!

Ron, the humblest guy in town.

It's dependent on the deal. I usually order a set of four as my spare isn't the same wheel as the other four wheels are, so that's what I meant.

Buy 3 and get one free.

But it doesn't really matter as the deals come into your inbox almost as frequently as walmart deals did when I signed up for my Covid boosters.

The deals are so frequent, that the only thing I can summarize as repeatable is that there will almost always be a sales going on, but it may or my not apply to the brand of tires that you are looking for.

However, they'll have almost every brand and size that you might want.

And most of the time there is no shipping, which is appreciable when they do have shipping (I see right now there is no shipping for example).

Depending on where you live, you often can saves sales tax.

The combination on a $100 tire makes that alone a savings of $20 to $25 per tire (using wide estimates of shipping costs and sales tax of course).

Add a discount of only 10% (which they very often have) and that's 1/3rd the price of the tire saved even if you only buy a single tire from them.

You can ship the tires to anywhere so that's not a problem.

You get a call to come down and they'll install it for the already agreed upon price so you know everything before you pull out of your garage.

Except the tip.

Because the idea is to install the core and pressure the tire promptly before the tire bead falls back off the rim seat.

Well, the good news is that the radials last a lot longer than the diagonal bias ply tires used to last when we all started working on our cars!

That 20K miles seems low though. Almost at the diagonal ply tire wear rate. Do you drive squirrelly roadways maybe? Twisting & turning sometimes scrubs off a lot of the tread on the fronts.

One set of tools that I've always wanted to buy are basic caster, camber & toe measurement tools. Mostly caster because camber can be measured as a function of the caster with the proper sliding 20 degree protractor plates.

I've measured toe with a long wooden lath, but it is always a pita when they give the measurements in degrees instead of in distances, and when they use the centerline instead of wheel to wheel (although I know why).

While I'm aware that there is more to alignment than caster, camber & toe, those are really the critical measurements when you know the vehicle hasn't been in an accident & therefore you're just checking if anything went awry.

A typical alignment is what? $100 to $150? Do you think the caster, camber & toe tools can be had for about that much?

I suspect the Kirkland oil is OEMed by Warren. Warren does a lot of the house-brand oils and they will blend anything to meet whatever specs the reseller wants. If you want crap, they'll make it for you... if you want a high end oil with ZDDP added, they'll make that for you too... whatever you want they'll make. So it's more a matter of what grade and formulation Costco wants and will pay for than the manufacturer.

--scott

Thinko. Mostly camber tools, as caster can be imputed from +/- 20 degree camber.

What I'd like are toe plates and a toe distance measuring tool. Then a camber tool (and probably a camber jig for fitting most wheels).

After that, I'd need some kind of turning plate. I think that's it.

Do you think the caster, camber & toe tools can be had for about the price of one or two alignments? That way I can justify the cost of the tools.

At one time I thought about buying one of the old independent gas stations that had went out of business. A couple of bays, a real lift or maybe a pit, an office and storage area that could be made into living quarters...

The problem is the old underground tanks that had been leaking for a couple of decades and a EPA mandate cleanup.

Wolf's Head was a decent brand of oil. Then there was Fox Head, which you bought when you were getting 100 miles per quart. I think it was recycled. I haven't seen dubious crap like that in a long time.

No, and they are close mouthed about their house brands. There's nothing new about that. I've loaded commodities like canned beans where almost every pallet was a different brand.

No brand loyalty. CostCo, Conoco, Exxon, whatever. Sometimes I stop at the Sinclair station out of nostalgia for the dinosaurs.

On May 01, 2023, rbowman wrote (in article<news: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>):

I think all motor oil is regulated, isn't it? So it can't be garbage. Can it?

I don't buy almost anything by marketing name because I try to understand what it is that I'm buying, where most automotive things we buy are highly regulated and hence they have specifications marked on the item we buy.

Take motor oil, for example, where the main specifications, of course, are API and SAE designations, the API being the more pertinent to the quality.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Dexos, but I don't bother looking at that, but you may.

After that, there are tons of things you can look at (how many of us used to send our used oil out for analysis long ago, for example), but mostly those and the "type" of oil (synthetic or not mostly) are what matters.

You have to know to be using automotive motor oil, and not diesel or two-stroke or machine oil, but other than those basics, that's all you need to make an informed decision, in my humblest of opinions.

Certainly you never equate price to quality since there's usually more of a relationship of price to marketing budget than there is to the oil quality.

Oil starts in the ground, not working for anyone. Then it gets pumped into a ship, still not working for anyone. Then someone buys it and pipes it to a refinery and only then does the oil start working for someone. But that someone refines it and then sells it to everyone, so it's back to not working for anyone other than the company that puts it into the packaging.

For Kirkland, that packaing, I think someone said, is Warren which helped me find that he was indeed correct.

Most things we buy on a car are a commodity, such as oil and gas, where people who buy by price only are almost always people who don't understand what it is that they're buying. Doesn't matter if it's people who buy by the highest or lowest price - there is almost no relationship to quality using price as the metric.

The only relationship to quality is whatever is important about the gas.

The nice thing about buying tires, brakes, gasoline, oil, whatever, for your vehicle is they're all regulated such that they're all usually good. People who buy things based on the price or worse, based on meaningless things such as the length of the warranty, almost always are people who never bothered to understand what it is that they are purchasing.

And that's ok. They don't have to understand anything that they're buying.

But then they shouldn't be telling others, who do understand what it is that they're buying, that they're cheap bastards for finding the best quality at the best price, which is what will happen for most of us who do our own oil changes at home.

Ron, the humblest guy in town.

I ran bias ply tires on the pickup until I couldn't get them anymore. Back in the day radials had tender sidewalls if you live in a rocky area.

In Montana :) You've really got to go out of your way to find an interesting road. It was a mix of driving, probably the major portion on interstates, some gravel roads,

They were Bridgestone Potenza RE92s

"Tread life has been an issue for some"

Toyota put them on a lot of vehicles. They're billed as a somewhat sporty tire which I thought was odd.

On May 02, 2023, Scott Dorsey wrote (in article<news:u2po7j$i5h$ snipped-for-privacy@panix2.panix.com>):

You were right.

All that matters, to me, for gasoline, which is a commodity, is top tier and the AKI which you want to get the knock rating for your compression. For me, that's the regular but I see idiots putting premium into their normal compression engines all the time - as they think that just because it costs more - it must be better.

As always, price is never a metric of quality (or, in the case of the anti knock index, price isn't a metric of suitability).

I think the ZDDP is "good stuff" for engines but it will kill the cat. Right?

Ron, the humblest guy in town.

Yes, and it's gravel...

I knew a guy was very good at changing big truck tires and that was his tool of choice. Of course if you're a klutz you might destroy the rim. A splitting wedge and a single jack works too.

The one I have is similar. You can save a little space by putting the cartridge in but not tightening it down enough to puncture the seal. As you say, you're not dealing with a frost covered cartridge frozen to your fingers.