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Thread: George's Garage

  1. #171
    Administrator dodint's Avatar
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    I will say that driving across Texas on a clear night with the top down was awesome. You could see the Milky Way while driving provided nobody was coming the other direction.

  2. #172
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Tire experts, does this nail in my tire look fixable? It is close to the edge.

    Found it this morning before work after noticing a TPMS light. At the tire store now waiting for my turn but the guy who inspected it said they won’t know for sure until they attempt the repair.

    Suddenly I’m remembering stories from others with AWD vehicles saying they bought four new tires after tire store salesmen told them it’s not safe to replace just one.

    Wondered if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing. Thanks.
    Last edited by George; January 10th, 2020 at 08:21 AM.

  3. #173
    Administrator dodint's Avatar
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    I am not a tire tech, but that looks far enough into the tread to be pluggable. But you're right, it's close.

    The article I got this illustration from seems to imply it won't be repairable:



    https://www.sullivantire.com/learn/t...er-tire-repair

  4. #174
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    My previous professional recommendation is to not plug it.

  5. #175
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Thanks gents. Always nice to have a second and third opinion. Turns out those weren't new tires as the car dealer said when I bought it. A car dealer lying? What a shock! They looked new, and even smelled new in the garage at home, but it was probably the gallon of Armor-All on each one at the time. But that is consistent with other details of the car's history - relatively low mileage and great condition for its age due to having been kept at a vacation home up in the mountains. That checked out when I got the title with the previous owner's address.

    My tires had 80% tread left, according to the tire guy, but they were old and are now discontinued, so I couldn't just buy one tire to match the other three. And he said it wouldn't be safe to plug that tire, which wasn't a huge surprise. I've had a few tires plugged in the past. So, for the second time in three months, I unexpectedly bought a set of tires. Strange how life works sometimes, but I'm finally at a point in life where I'm not driving an old car on mismatched tires, so I won't complain.
    Last edited by George; January 10th, 2020 at 08:21 AM.

  6. #176
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    Not trying to be a jag, just giving you some information for life:



    This is coming from a guy that bought two different collector cars that turned out to have ancient tires on them. One of which I took to the track and managed to form cracks around the tire inside the tread lines.

  7. #177
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Thanks. I knew tires had date codes on them but hadn't taken the time to look for them or learn how to read them.

  8. #178
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Anyone ever owned three sets of wheels for one vehicle? I bet so, at this forum.

    Well, add me to the list, at least for now. Come along for a long and boring tale of my quest on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, if you're really desperate for a story about nothin'.

    After watching Craigslist for a long time for a set of OEM steel wheels from the base model Ridgeline, I finally found this set and gladly paid the asking price of $40 for all four back in 2020. Other sets had been much more expensive or were too far away or whatever else - set of three, only one, or whatever.



    I ended up paying more for center caps online than I had for the wheels. But I knew that going in. What I didn't know was that I'd need different lug nuts. Twenty of those from the Honda dealer weren't cheap, but by then I was "all in". The Discount Tire shop I've been going to for about 17 years now installed TPMS monitors and Bridgestone Blizzak tires. I finally had a separate set of tires & wheels I can change myself, rather than having the shop switch tires on the same set of wheels as I did for far too many years with my old Accord.

    A couple weeks ago, after seeing the weather forecast, I did a quick switch in my garage one day and stacked my all-season tires on the original aluminum wheels in the corner of the garage until April or so.

    The next day, the front passenger tire caught my eye in the garage. Something didn't look right. I bent down and realized I had forgotten these snow tires are directional. The driver's side rear tire was also on the wrong side. So, I got out my floor jack and one of the summer tires to use as a temporary, since I don't own jack stands. Lifted driver's side rear, took off winter tire, put on summer tire, lowered car. Lifted passenger's front, took off one winter tire, put on the other in the correct direction, lowered car. Back to driver's side, etc.

    A ridiculous waste of time, but lesson learned. It reminded me of when I used to rotate the tires on my Mistubishi pickup in the parking lot of my apartment complex in my twenties with only the stock scissor jack and the spare tire. Took forever, but it was free, back when I was young and had much more time than money.

    Well, fast-forward to Thanksgiving day. My TPMS light came on for the driver's side front tire. Odd. I had just topped off the air on the snow tires when I installed them. I pulled over before leaving the neighborhood and saw the tire pressure was at about 22 PSI, down from 32 or 33 PSI a few days ago. I did that thing where you roll forward a few inches at a time and keep getting out to look for a nail in the tire. I didn't see anything in the tire, but I assumed something was or had been in that tire.

    Since no tire stores were open on Thanksgiving, I backed into the garage so that tire was accessible, pulled my air compressor over to it, and checked it throughout the day, before bed, and in the morning. It went back down to about 22 PSI every few hours and I kept pumping it back up to 32 or 33.

    Friday morning, my quest began.

    I got to the tire shop early. The diagnosis surprised me. I had been expecting either "we patched the hole, no charge" or "that nail was in a really bad spot, so, um, you need, like, four new tires, man!"

    Instead, after the tech checked it out, the service writer told me the wheel had been cracked and welded previously. He said the weld had failed and that's why the tire is leaking. He said they were going to install the spare for me but it was too old to be safe, so they just inflated my tire again. I'm glad they didn't install the spare - it just would have made more work for me later on.

    He started talking about selling me a wheel, but after all the effort to get a set of OEM steelies, I wasn't about to add one of their generic black steel wheels or anything else to the set. I thanked him and said I'd go home and install one of my all-season tires for now and consider my options. Even though they had my car in the shop for some time, there was no charge for this visit. That is typical of how I've been treated at this shop and it's why I keep going back there. It helps that's it's close to home, too.

    And now, here's a quick back story.

    About two years ago, I got a nail in one of my all-season tires that couldn't be fixed. No, not the one in the old tires that the car came with in post #172 above. This was in the set I bought to replace those. The guy at the same shop made a half-hearted attempt to sell me four new ones, but we both knew they were only a year old at the time. I bought a pair instead of four and the guy suggested I keep the undamaged one they took off to use as a full-size spare tire. He knew that Ridgelines came with a small "donut" spare tire but they can fit a full-sized spare and he asked me if I had one. I did not.

    That lone all-season tire, without a wheel, has been in my garage ever since. I've been meaning to get around to finding a wheel for it and replacing the donut spare that I assume is original equipment from 2009, but it just hadn't come to the top of my to-do list until this happened.

    I made the short drive home on my cracked wheel with the leaking tire and swapped it for one of the all-season tires on an aluminum wheel that I took off two weeks ago. It seems like all I do these days is change tires in my garage!

    Then I went to craigslist, knowing how long I had waited to find decent and affordable Ridgeline steelies before, and wondering if I'd have to order one from eBay instead. The last time I had checked eBay, they were selling for $100 - $150 per wheel, plus time in transit and probably shipping costs too.

    Behold what craigslist had for me!



    After checking with my wife to see if she could stand another crazy craigslist trip instead of me continuing the Basement Blitz of cleaning and organizing and bringing up Christmas decorations that I had previously committed to, I sent the guy a message. He replied immediately. "Come anytime; I work ten minutes from my house. Tell me when you pass Exit [whatever] on your way here and I'll leave work."

    Nice weather. Surprisingly light traffic on the highway, except near one outlet mall. It was Black Friday, though. Met the guy and mentioned my need for two of these four wheels and that I had been told one of my others apparently had been welded. He seemed as surprised as I was about the welding. He said these had been his snow tire wheels on his 2007 Ridgeline and hadn't been welded or in an accident.

    Is it time for another tangent? Probably.

    Now I'm driving north through Colorado Springs with the new-to-me wheels and remembering that Christmas is coming and that a couple packs of baseball cards would make a great stocking stuffer for my daughter. She has been interested in cards since we went to our first Rocky Mountain Vibes minor-league baseball game this summer and afterward stopped at the largest sporting goods store we had ever seen: Scheels. You guys ever been to a Scheels? I hadn't. I had never even heard of them. We just saw the enormity of it all lit up in the night sky and were drawn to it like moths.

    Their stores are HUGE. Think Cabela's or Bass Pro Shops huge. Big footprint and two large floors. Both of the ones I've been two have working Ferris wheels in them that are more than two stories tall! They have everything from casual clothing to home furnishings to stuff for every sport, guns and ammo, and even bike shops with service departments in their stores that sell "real" bicycles like Trek instead of the usual department store cheapies. These stores sell everything, and lots of it. No, I'm not a stockholder or anything like that.

    The first time we went there, we picked up a couple packs of Topps baseball cards on whim. When we got home, I pulled out my cards from mostly 1977 - 1979 and we had fun looking at big moustaches and sideburns flapping in the breeze like Joe Namath's on that Simpsons episode. Now it's tattoos and beards, I guess. Another time, after a Northern Colorado Owlz game, we happened upon the Greeley store and bought a couple more packs of cards. Now, it seems like a tradition.

    Anyway, the Scheels store is right off the interstate, so I decided to brave a large retail store in the middle of the day on Black Friday. I finally found a parking spot and tried not to let the crowds pouring in and out of the place deter me. Let me say that in this time of everyone being so short-staffed that you can't any help from anyone, anywhere, ever, this place was packed to the gills with employees. I elbowed my way past hordes of slack-jawed yokels and extended family groups blocking entire aisles, snatched some cards from the shelf, and bolted for the cash registers like Indiana Jones with the big rock rolling behind him.

    Every cash register in the place was manned (unlike grocery stores and Home Depot these days where you're lucky to find one surly human actually taking people's money) with not one by two employees - a cashier and a bagger. And, get this: they were enthusiastically waving! "Come here! Right over here! We'll check you out right now!" I was out of that store in about three minutes on Black Friday! Astonishing. They must be paying people enough to not only show up but really play the game and act as if they enjoy working there. What a concept!

  9. #179
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Back on the road again, having decided not to push my luck with Black Friday crowds by visiting the new Whataburger restaurant in the same parking lot, I decided to go straight back to the tire shop and see if they'd swap out the bad wheel for me. In their parking lot, I labeled my confusing situation with painters tape and a sharpie and explained it all to the same service writer again. I said, "Remember me? I was here this morning with the Ridgeline with a cracked wheel. I just bought some wheels on craigslist." He seemed impressed, or maybe I was just pretty damn pleased with how things had worked out.

    I explained all this and he acted like they do stuff like this all the time.

    Top left tire in picture: Mount spare tire on this wheel with no TMPS sensor.

    Top right tire: bad wheel. Move TPMS sensor and this tire to the wheel in the lower right.

    Lower right tire: these are the lug nuts for the steel wheel. I should have added something like "aluminum wheels have different lug nuts" but didn't think of it.

    Finally, install new wheel with TPMS sensor and snow tire on driver's side front and return all-season tire on aluminum wheel to the truck bed.



    I had to wait more than two hours because by now it was early afternoon and the joint was jumpin'. It seems like this place is always busy, and not just when people are rushing the place for snow tire changes before a big storm.

    They got it all right except the lug nuts. I jacked up the car one more time when I got home and switched them out. No TPMS lights came on, so I assume they moved the sensor from the bad wheel to the good one.

    And now I finally have a full-size spare tire. I just need to wrestle the old one out of its hiding spot and jam this one in there. Might be time to look at a better portable jack too. I've never used the stock one but read on the Ridgeline forum that it's not all that great for such a heavy vehicle. And I need to put the other wheel with the aluminum wheel back on the stack until Spring.



    In writing this ridiculously long post, I noticed one of those craigslist ads said the wheels were 7.5" wide and the other was 8" wide. I checked. They're the same width, although there are minor cosmetic differences between "old" and "new" sets.

    And, finally a question, please, if anyone actually read all this:

    What is the proper way to dispose of a steel wheel? Can I just put it in my recycling bin?

  10. #180
    mAdminstrator Random's Avatar
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    Scrap metal bin at your local dump or recycling center.
    Whoomah!

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