I need to vent!
Discovered another nail in a tire and figured it was a good time to take the truck in to have that fixed, the tires rotated and balanced using the policy I purchased when the tires were installed. I ignored the warning bells ringing in my head as I walked up to the counter and smelled marijuana on the salesman.
A while later he walks over and tells me that the tire is not repairable, the nail is outside of the repairable area. I told him where it was and now he tells me this? We go out into the shop and he gives me this story about the grinder wheel hitting the sidewall on the inside, etc. etc. We go back into the lobby and I show him on a KO2 on display that there is plenty of room to work. He's holding to his guns thinking he's going to get at least one tire out of me. Not happening, I told him that I would fix it myself. He shows me a chart that excludes the outside tread for making repairs, this is for P-Metric tires, not LT. Either way, I've repaired hundreds of tires with plugs and patches and know tires, I was a store manager before this pothead was born.
They finish, print the receipt and I'm out the door. Fire up the Tech-2 and see that the TP Sensors are still in their original positions. Well, they did rotate, but not cross-rotate as I asked and did not relearn the sensor positions. If they didn't do any of this, did those knuckleheads even balance the tires? Torque them to 140? I'll go look later but am pretty steamed right now. There's nothing I hate more in this fallen world than a liar!
I left and went to an auto parts store and picked up some new plugs. We usually plug our tires and carry on but I had the last nail patched. The plug tools are in the other car so I'll do the repair myself tomorrow morning and rotate the tires with the kids. Or maybe take it to another tire store?
I looked up the industry standard for tire repairs and they do indeed now refuse to fix tires with road hazards more than 1/8" in diameter outside of the center tread area. However, that is for P-Metric tires and I then contacted BF Goodrich directly and they said anywhere in the tread on the KO2 is repairable.
Tires are tough, I've plugged and patched road hazards successfully in the crown but understand this is not ideal. They don't even do plug repairs anymore but we rarely have problems with them still. Just to prove the point decades ago, one of my new to me Buick Grand Nationals had one tire with seven plugs in one tire. We ran that car on the track, full burnouts and all and never had a problem with that tire, or any plugged tire that we raced with.
Rant over.
