New Tires

I ordered new tires for my wife's car from TireRack.com. I used to buy my tires at Les Schwab. I also used to have a job. If I had a job and was pulling down 100 grand a year, I wouldn't have any problem paying Les the thousand dollars they want. But I don't, so I do. I looked for tires at Costco, but the Endeavor seems to use a somewhat odd size and I couldn't find any, and the two people working there were busy chatting up other, more important customers, so screw that. So I looked on the internet. Found the exact same tire that was on the car, tires that had given us 60,000 miles of perfectly satisfactory service, for $500. Shipping is going to be a bear, right? Well, it's $100. That's doable. What about installation? There's a place in Beaverton, H-M MotorSports that will do the job, for another $100. So we're looking at $700 instead of $1000. Sorry Les, I have to scrimp where I can. Paid a visit to H-M, just to see if they were really in business, and if they really could mount some tires for me, and they seem to be all squared away.

Let's see about those tires again. The first ones I picked would have to come from a warehouse back East, which would mean at extra $30 shipping and a probably a couple more days. Could I get a different tire? Well, yes you can. There are like a gazillion different tires. OK, let's set the price cut off at $500 for four. That narrows it down some, but it still leaves 21 different tires. Being just a little obsessive-compulsive, I download the web page, and then cut and paste the data into a Google Spreadsheet. Now I can get a better look at it. A couple of tires get eliminated for one simple reason or another. Now the only differences left are in customer feedback. I'm a little suspicious of this kind of data. I mean I have never really noticed much difference in tires. It's usually a package deal, you've got a car, it's got tires. It's liable to have those tires as long as I have the car. I have noticed a few obvious things, like new tires general are smoother, mud and snow tires are noisier and bigger tires can give you a little more grip and a softer ride. But as to whether one tire rates a 7 or an 8 in responsiveness, who are you kidding? But hey, it's the only difference we have to go by, so I end up picking a General Altimax. We shall see. The only General tire I ever heard of was some super deluxe thing they were selling a long time ago, and they wanted a hundred dollars for it then, which was like double what every one else was asking.

TireRack.com's West Coast warehouse is in McCarran,. Nevada, a stone's throw East of Reno on I-80 and 390 miles West of Wendover, Utah. There doesn't appear to be any other reason to go there.


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