Snow tires from Amazon!

[Ron]

In case you are looking for new tires, I just bought my 265/50 R20 Blizzaks for 197.00 prime shipping.

 

[doc]

Thats a good deal!
Just picked up a barely used set of Nokian Hakkapelitta R2s in 255/55/19 for my SQ5 for a song from neighbor; probably just killed any chance of a good snow year in CO.

 

[Ron]

I'm selling my 260/50 r18 Blizzaks with about 200 miles on them for $550. they came off my last jeep.

 

[sparty]

I got my Nokians from Amazon back in 2017. I was skeptical, but everything did end up working out (there was a shipping glitch—FedEx misplaced a tire before eventually finding it—but any tire shipment could have the same issue).

 

[Ron]

they are arriving today. 2 day shipment.

 

[Ken_R]

In case you are looking for new tires, I just bought my 265/50 R20 Blizzaks for 197.00 prime shipping.

Really good deal!

Good to know. The Blizzaks on my subbie have one more season left before they get to the second half of the tread which is not as grippy.

 

[Tom K.]

Anybody know of a source for a Hakka studless tire and wheel combo for a 2012 Sienna LE AWD?

Spinning around with a few life changes, and would love to simply have them show up at home, where I'm more than capable of swapping them out with my floor jack.

Thanks in advance!

 

[raytseng]

tirerack wheel+tire package game has improved considerably, not only roadforce balanced, and they guarentee fitment and it seems they setup and ship the package with any the necessary adapters specific to your vehicle.
I dont know if they have a specific fitment for your vehicle for your desired tire, but check it out

edit: doesn't look like TR carries nokian, america's tire does and they do packages too, but not sure how good their wheel fitment selector is.

 

[Tom K.]

tirerack wheel+tire package game has improved considerably, not only roadforce balanced, and they guarentee fitment and it seems they setup and ship the package with any the necessary adapters specific to your vehicle.
I dont know if they have a specific fitment for your vehicle for your desired tire, but check it out

edit: doesn't look like TR carries nokian, america's tire does and they do packages too, but not sure how good their wheel fitment selector is.

Thanks! I ended up going with Tire Rack. Decent looking wheels and the new-ish Conti Viking studless tires. REALLY well done website, and no problem delivering them to a third party (for a bunch of boring reasons).

I've gotta say that I really wanted to stick with the Hakkas, but Americas Tires, Point S, and Tire Factory websites are very poor experiences, so Tire Rack got my money.

 

[Joby Graham]

+1 for Tire Rack - Been using them for 20+ years and have always had seamless transactions, whether it was unmounted tires, wheel and tire packages, shipped to home or an installer.
OTOH, I bought tires from Pep Boys and Mavis and had them mount/balance/install them, both promising to use a torque wrench on the lugs. Right...the wheels on the GTI (89ft.lbs.spec) were impact gun and torque stick tightened to ~ 130, and the Suburban (140ft.lb.) were tightened to only 80.

 

[DanoT]

What is the deal with getting a garage to mount tires that were bought on line. Is it gonna cost a lot extra for mounting and balance? (kinda like buying skis and bindings online and then finding a shop to do the mounting for extra $$$?)

 

[François Pugh]

Costco does it up here for a reasonable price. It costs a bit more if you didn't buy the tires there, but I don't remember how much it was. I found this on the interwebs...

 

[Tom K.]

+1 for Tire Rack - Been using them for 20+ years and have always had seamless transactions, whether it was unmounted tires, wheel and tire packages, shipped to home or an installer.
OTOH, I bought tires from Pep Boys and Mavis and had them mount/balance/install them, both promising to use a torque wrench on the lugs. Right...the wheels on the GTI (89ft.lbs.spec) were impact gun and torque stick tightened to ~ 130, and the Suburban (140ft.lb.) were tightened to only 80.

Pet peeve. When a third party does the change, the first thing I do is drive home and re-torque everything.

Especially if it's the crazy busy time just before the first real storm of the year.

 

[sparty]

What is the deal with getting a garage to mount tires that were bought on line. Is it gonna cost a lot extra for mounting and balance? (kinda like buying skis and bindings online and then finding a shop to do the mounting for extra $$$?)

Depends on the garage. The place that mounted my Nokians was a good, independent and local shop; I asked about getting Nokians, and they said that they didn't sell them, but they'd be happy to mount then if I ordered online. I brought in used rims, new TPMS sensors bought on eBay, and the tires (also bought on eBay) and paid the same they'd have charged had I bought tires there.

I've had other shops either refuse or tack on a substantial surcharge. I don't blame the ones who refuse--there are a lot of ways for customer-provided parts to turn into a PITA--but the ones who advertise a low mount cost because they're shifting cost to tire sales annoy me. Don't claim it costs $x when you want twice that when I carry in tires; it's a higher price service and you offer a combo purchase discount.

 

[raytseng]

yea agree the field is all over and each shop has their own policies on what work they want to take on. And you can extend beyond tires to also parts in general.

Think of it from the shops point of view and not just the product but also what kind of customer is bringing in their own tires they pull out of the back of their car, and not even droppshipped from tirerack or other known tire distributor.
Proportionally its going to be the cheapskates that are doing this to find the cheapest source of that tire and so have the higher chance this will be greymarket, and a higher proportion something is wrong with that tire. Then in the human side, a higher chance this customer will haggle and conplain about some little thing like the tires are out of balance, but really due to the tires being out of round or poor, causing more work, so it costs more to deal with that. But instead of saying no, just charge more instead to filter them out, and the cheapskate will bugoff to find a cheaper shop.

But there is also the other type of group where people are bringing their specific parts is not because they are cheap but because they are picky, and have purchased a highend part or an oem part, not available through the daily generic repair parts network. So they are byo due to issue of customer wanting highest quality part, and not price and won't be an issue. My shop that I go to, does welcome outside parts and sees you're bringing in $3k bilstein high end shocks kit, won't tack on a cheapskates surcharge, vs if you came in with $200 shocks you picked up down the street at autozone with a coupon, that might be wrong or missing hardware. Still, policy typically is no warranty on parts that are customer supplied or the labor for that job.

 

[Dave Marshak]

I was told by the employee that the nitrogen is an extra charge at $44 if you supply your own tires. I questioned if they could just use regular air but they said they "We only have nitrogen. We don't have air.

That sounds like BS. Every shop has air for an impact wrench and the tire machines, and I'm sure they don't use nitrogen to set the bead when they mount the tires. Mechanics are paid flat rate and I'd be shocked if they ever deflate a tire just to refill with nitrogen. If they told me I need to pay for nitrogen I'd insist on seeing the bottle.

I'm pretty cynical about car shops. My last trip to a tire shop for leaky tire, they told me I had a broken spring, and gave me an estimate of $1200 to fix it. That included $500 for one spring, which should be around $100. I passed on the repair because the car was still riding dead level, but I'm still carrrying a grudge because I had to crawl under the car to be sure.

dm

 

[Ogg]

I have used tire rack in the past for wheel/tire packages with great success. I am also lucky enough to have an amazing independent tire shop near me that happens to be one of their authorized installers but also competes with their prices(+ or -) while including mounting/balancing. They also can usually get whatever tires I want within between 3 and 48 hours.

 

[Joby Graham]

That sounds like BS. Every shop has air for an impact wrench and the tire machines, and I'm sure they don't use nitrogen to set the bead when they mount the tires. Mechanics are paid flat rate and I'd be shocked if they ever deflate a tire just to refill with nitrogen. If they told me I need to pay for nitrogen I'd insist on seeing the bottle.

I'm pretty cynical about car shops. My last trip to a tire shop for leaky tire, they told me I had a broken spring, and gave me an estimate of $1200 to fix it. That included $500 for one spring, which should be around $100. I passed on the repair because the car was still riding dead level, but I'm still carrrying a grudge because I had to crawl under the car to be sure.

dm

Nitrogen is good in theory, but not effective unless the mounted tire is put on a vacuum pump and immediately filled with nitrogen after the moisture has been boiled out. For street cars, using dry, filtered compressed air is just fine (emphasis on dry).

 

[raytseng]

Nitrogen is good in theory, but not effective unless the mounted tire is put on a vacuum pump and immediately filled with nitrogen after the moisture has been boiled out. For street cars, using dry, filtered compressed air is just fine (emphasis on dry).

Are you making this up? Nobody would vacuum a tire that could severely damage the structure and be counterproductive.
Nitogen fill is accomplished by purging cycles. And most high volume serious nitogen fill setups like they have at costco or tirerack they have automated systems to do the tire filling and the purge cycles. This achieves over 95% nitrogen vs 78% from ambient.
The tech hooks up the tires, sets the desired pressure and presses a button and it'll do a purge or multiple purges or whatever target is configured. The machine handles it all on multiple tires at a time. The tech isn't standing there manually inflating and checking tires 1by1 using a air hose and a manual stick gauge in a high volume place.

Unless you're going for a landspeed record, absolute complete purge of oxygen is not necessary for consumer applications; and most likely the on-site nitogen concentrator/generator does not achieve 100% nitrogen either.

[this is also relevant to @Francois's post above, the way I see it, the scenario at Costco isn't exactly that they don't have regular air; but their tire filling system is already setup and optimized to move mass # of cars through with automatic machines to do nitrogen fill; and all the air tools are all setup at their stations only for tools.
When you're asking them to not use nitrogen, you basically asking them to modify their whole setup and switch out tools and hoses just for you to not pay the fee and they would have to manually fill your tires by hand instead of using the automatic machine. Costco is about pushing volume through, not to do a special 1-off cases. I I can see why they say they say they don't fill cars with regular air and say they only fill with the nitrogen machines. Really it's a softer way of saying we don't want to do your special request that's going to take more time; for less money. ]

 

[Dave Marshak]

Nitogen fill is accomplished by purging cycles. And most high volume serious nitogen fill setups like they have at costco or tirerack they have automated systems to do the tire filling and the purge cycles...

...the scenario at Costco isn't exactly that they don't have regular air; but their tire filling system is already setup and optimized to move mass # of cars through with automatic machines to do nitrogen fill; and all the air tools are all setup at their stations only for tools.
When you're asking them to not use nitrogen, you basically asking them to modify their whole setup and switch out tools and hoses just for you to not pay the fee and they would have to manually fill your tires by hand instead of using the automatic machine.

Have you actually seen any of that? Pictures or it didn't happen.

A mason once told me "never strike a joint the client can't see." I'm pretty sure that applies across all trades.

dm