According to Audi main dealer to lad at work.

You must have all four tyres changed annually

It thinks I’m wrong for questioning that even though he does under average (but not minimal where the tyres would degrade) mileage 😆

Hey Hora,

Do you live in Didsbury neck of the woods (well i gathered that). Fancy going for a blatt, i’m new to the area and only just sorted a mtb out.

Time for a change of a)Dealer b)tyres dependant on how gullible he is

Hi joe, we might be riding Sunday evening if thats good? Its a loop from Jacksons boat- to the Didsbury pub and around and back.

Someone is having a laugh – My Audi has its tyres changed when they are illegal 😉

Normally fronts every 15 months and rears every 24 months

Actually on a more serious note, if that were the case that they (MUST be changed yearly) that would be part of the annual service would it not?

Main dealer is down on sales?

Or lad at work has got his wires crossed?

4WD system, requiring front/back to keep similar treadwear so it doesn’t knacker the diffs?

Front wheel drive 1.8T.

Funnily some have said the same about the 4WD system on all the Subaru’s. My arguement for that was surely the Forester was designed to be driven on rough roads/tracks anyway and English road cambers/road imperfections and potholes etc mean that a new tyre (+3/-3mm) diff is a poor arguement?

Audi dealers try to screw customers at every opportunity. Told me I needed new wipers at every service and wanted £70 for them. Got some from the local car spares shop for £20 a week before the next service and still got told by Audi that I needed new wipers. I take it to an independent garage now.

I know its not an Audi garage but a Seat main stealer promised me that no matter what they found on a standard service they would only charge me £120 inc VAT. I repeated this to the Service Mgr and he confirmed. Turned up to find two new front tyres on the car. They came free ‘as a goodwill gesture’- well it was either that or a spanner monkey climbed round a skip looking for my exact tyres.

Call me tight but its principle.

My Audi dealer told me that I should buy my tyres from a place down the road as they only order them in – slap £20 on each and resell them!!

Been using the same place for years now and now get "regular" customer discount!!!

Absolute boll**ks. The rubber does degrade, but anything les than about 5 years is fine. When they are worn enough to change, you will find the main dealers are ridiculously expensive for tyres. Ring round the local tyre places and with 30 mins work you will get at least 15% off their first price, especially if you have expensive low profile tyres

I remember when I was going to buy my bro-in-laws S3 off of him- I had a quote for the cambelt of £800 EEK!! 😯

A proper Quattro will do 36,000 miles on four Michelins, if swapped front-rear a couple of times (slightly different wear patterns front/rear). A full set with 33% discount is a shade under £500 notes. If you do average mileage you’d be ripped off to the tune of a grand. You could buy a bike for that.

4WD system, requiring front/back to keep similar treadwear so it doesn’t knacker the diffs?

A proper 4wd system will have a centre diff and be designed to withstand the difference in tread depth no problem.

I used tyres at a rate of a front set every 12 months and a rear set every 24 on my celica. Certainly not necessary though 🙂

Bloke in Kwik Fit told me that tyres only lasted 12k miles on average. I thought the average was more like 20-30k. Ours are getting low after 23k driving pretty gently but the wear marks are still not showing through.

Kwik fit generally talk sales rubbish, are expensive, over-torque wheel nuts and tell you your brakes need changing when they don’t. They last 12K miles if you drive like a loon. 20-30 I would say was fairly average too.

I’ve got an audi allroad and it needed its tyres changing after only one year, but the wear was uneven across the tread which means something is awry. In my case there was an air link on the rim which meant the tyre was underinflated.

I order my tyres over the internet on blackcircles, they then make the appointment at a local garage and hey presto, its an excellent service and the cheapest I could find…another recommendation is the kumho tyre brand, very good grip, wear and noise vs price…

In my case there was an air link on the rim which meant the tyre was underinflated.

You mean in your case there was a leak in the rim and you didnt check your tyres often enough to keep them inflated? 🙂 I’ve done the same and lost a tyre because of it.

The number of people who dont check their tyre inflation from week to week staggers me, I think you need to shell out for a set of £100 a corner tyres before you realise the importance – safety doesnt play a role :D.

It is advsied that tyres should be swapped between front & rear to maintain even wear rates, though on some 4 wheel drive cars (early Haldex diffs such as first Volvo XC70 I think) they should not be exchanged if the remaining tread depth difference F to R is >1mm. This is because a smaller rolling radius on the rear axle causes the diff to believe the rears are spinning and sends drive to them constantly. The diff was not designed to have such a duty cycle and would overheat.
(I am a tyre engineer by profession so sorry for the waffle) 😳

I’d be pretty p’d off if a set of tyres didn’t get at least 35,000 miles, although obviously I drive like a grandad and have an awfully underpowered car.

If 1mm difference front to rear screws up the diffs that is a very badly designed system. Apart from anything, unless the front and rear of the car are loaded precisely and the tyre pressures measured precisely you’ll get more difference from tyre compression. Dont the early haldex use viscous couplers much like the early toyota AWD systems? I’ve heard of volvo dealers mentioning this before so I dont suspect it’s a lie, but to have so little leeway in something that is guaranteed to occur is poor. Apparently the modern ones dont suffer from this. God help anyone who gets two flat tyres on the same axle…

I used to get 12k from a set of fronts (soft sports tyres) but much more from the rears. Changing yearly regardless of wear is surely b*llocks

Got into trouble with a friend when I was discussing something and said you’d have to drive like a muppet to wear tyres out in a year/12,000 miles. Guess who’d just had their tyres changed on their one year old car?!

I got 40,000 miles out of my last set of tyres.

Depends on your tyres as well, I tend to put the stickiest grippiest expensive tyres on my fun car and average hard wearing ones on my less fun one. Soft sticky ones last half the time for a multitude of reasons.

I have worked in the motor trade for at least 25 years and here are some of the things I have seen recently.

Working at the UK’s largest Used car dealer – Fitters (Technicians) Bring a car into the workshop to prepare it for sale, each car has it faults, so the fitter does all the usual faults, if it needs it or not.

This could mean a 2 day job of removing a dash to replace a bulb in the Aircon control. Rear subframe bushes. Window regulators, Discs and pads all round, tyres. (Renault Laguna). If it needs it or not.

What’s happening here is the fitters ripping off the employer as he gets paid for the number of hours he can sell. He can sell more hours than he actually works because tasks are allocated a time. 2 days to fit the Air con bulb when the bulb is ok. I watched this happen for 5 years before being made redundant. Other sites could produce cars cheaper………

So I move to a Vauxhall main dealers thinking things would be different. This is where I was introduced to the term “Static repair” (The parts never go near the car).

The fitters are given a job by the workshop controller, depends if he is in the “Static club” or not. Club members get the best jobs.

Retail customer brings his car for a service and gets told you need a brake fluid change, anti freeze change, brakes all round etc etc etc. Customer doesn’t know any better so has the work done.

Service managers happy cos he’s filling the hours in his workshop, fitters happy cos he’s making bonus and the workshop controllers happy cos he’s making bonus. This is called “UP SELL” .

Usually retail customers get the parts fitted so the fitters can keep the old parts for “Static repair”.

So lets say a customer brings his Corsa 1.2 in for a service and its in warranty, a “Static club” fitter will get the job. The customer has his service but the technician finds an oil leak on the timing cover and a cam seal is leaking. Honest.

Lucky customer is covered under warranty so the fitter get the parts, puts them in the “Static tank” (Oil pan) beats them around a bit and returns them to parts so they can go back to Vauxhall. The parts never see the car.

So lets say a customer brings his Astra in, same story as before but the fitter has an old oil pump in his tool box, so guess what this ones having.

Ebay is full of genuine Vauxhall parts. I wonder why?

All the time the Service managers happy cos he’s filling the hours in his workshop, fitters happy cos he’s making bonus and the workshop controllers happy cos he’s making bonus. Parts managers not happy cos he gets to make 10% on the parts.

Vauxhall however are losing out so they visit said dealer, so now we move on to “Static” body control units, or static stearing racks and the list goes on.

All this time I am told to keep it shut and say nothing, I managed 8 months.

Fast fit centres.

I worked at a Motor factors for many years where fast fit centres are your friend as they buy so many parts.

They way it works is, a customer takes his car to the fast fit centre, the fitters have to take a set amount off each customer, say £100 for this example. If he fails he must take £200 off the next customer and so on. The more money he takes the more bonus he gets.

A fitter does well at the “Up sell” and eventually makes manager, if he does well at that he gets sent to a centre that is failing so he can start the process again.

I have heard boasts from these people telling me they have charged customers more than the car is worth for parts which it never needed. How do they sleep.

Free safety check Sir? – just an opportunity to rip you off.

Life time guarantee on your brakes Sir – that means they will have plenty of future opportunities to rip you off time and time again.

I have seen and heard things that make me sick, in my experience a local garage with a good reputation is a better choice, ask a friend for a recommendation – but stay away from fast fit centres and dealers.

Peregrine

I know a little having a family member in the motor trade too. some sharks out there indeed.

Nice to see someone being so damned honest for once. have a good weekend!

jt

pmsl at Peregrine.

What a crock of shite.

In ten years of working in the commercial motor trade and having car dealerships within our group, oh and the father in law who ran a Pug main dealer workshop for 40yrs i have never heard such a loooong tale.

Yes garages work the system. If a ehicle is under warranty i encourage the mechanics to find every single fault possible. It makes sense and looks after the customer. Yes some garges are crooks. But you make it sound rife and thats bollox. The manufacturers wouldnt put up with it, the customers arent as thick as you make out and if i saw it happen anywhere the mechanic would be sacked in seconds. I have heard stories of dealerships charging for work not carried out, yes i accept that, but what you describe would take a bloody cloak and dagger members only club. Other than the service manager and one or two others, most garage mechanics are as thick as two short planks once you take a spanner out of their hands. They couldnt understand the system, never mind bend it.

you will find the main dealers are ridiculously expensive for tyres

not always. I have a BMW 3 series estate. Last time I looked at tyres, I couldn’t find anywhere cheaper than the main dealer. Heads up to Stratstone in Harrogate.

But now my "Service Pack" has expired, I get my servicing done at a local garage – recommended by another garage to MrsH when her car needed some work for an MOT. I haven’t been anywhere since, and this garage will get all my (and MrsH’s) future business.

Big recommendation for David’s Total Car Care in Shipley, West Yorkshire.

Oh and this local garage over main dealership is a myth.

If a mechanic gets paid x at main dealer and then gets offered x+1 at local garage he moves there. Whats the difference? Oh the fact its a main dealer….. Well that doesnt make sense because a main dealer has a manufacturer making all the rules and also has a customer complaints dept that goes absolutely fin mental if a customer complains. The local garage can tell you to bugger off and you havent got much you can do other than cry to trading standards.

The manufacturers are right on the back of te dealer if they smell a rat. We had Merc on the phone because a customer complained his new van was revving hard at 70mph on the motorway today. That van is booked in next week for £3000 worth of new rear axle at DEALER COST because they said so.

Take off your rose tinted glasses and accept that there are crooks everywhere and just because a main dealer has flash premises, they probably work bloody hard to maintain it. They probably employ a hell of a lot more people than your pokey little back st garage and put more back into the local community.

None of the above is related to cost btw. More about honesty. Of course a local garage should be cheaper. BUT its worth giving them the oppertunity as they will usually meet you half way at least

Fantom, what kind of tyres are you running on your Allroad?

I find that the Goodyear Wranglers wear out pretty quick (15k-20k front), slightly more on the back.

TLH – Nice rant, i have obviously hit a nerve. If you work in the motor trade you will know i am talking the truth. Not pleasant is it?

I left the Vauxhall dealers because i have principles, i refused to be involved in theft which is what i call taking parts from a parts department, for a customers car and selling them on Ebay.

If anyone from Vauxhall is reading i am quite happy to name names, explain in detail how the system works but not on a public forum. E-mail me with a contact number and i will start with the dealer group & dealer principle.

Hope Trevors reading this.

Soft sticky ones last half the time for a multitude of reasons.

Eh? Surely for one reason: they’re soft.

Hora, your dealer is talking crap! As someone who runs race cars and builds these things I know.

Punch him in the ear.

Experiences similar to those detailed by Peregrine are one of the reasons I NEVER take my car to a dealer/garage unless I cant actually buy the tools and do the job myself (nothing as yet). Even had good "word of mouth" recommended local garages doing the "static repair" on friends and families cars. Sod ’em all, I dont trust any of them. Maybe thats unfair, but in my experience (well, mine and that of my family and close friends), the majority do their damndest to rip you off.

On Subarus i’d swap front/back every 6 months and replace only in twos as you’d expect (fronts or backs or rotate). The Forester specifically will chew fronts. They are all (impreza floorpan) susceptible to camber problems so get your alignment checked every 6 months or less. But you can have fronts and backs with diff tread no problems at all. And if you have an STi you can of course decide which wheels get the most drive 😉 I get about 15K Kms out of fronts and 20K Kms out of rears on all my subarus irrespective of model.

Having spent 5 years working in the motor trade for AM parts manufacturer, during which I was required to cover an area with 500 garages ranging from 1man bands to multi franchise dealership – my thoughts are its down to the people who run them not the fact they are dealers or not. I’ve met some real nasty blokes who I’d not trust an inch and others who I’d happily let babysit for me in both types of garages.

I do agree that there are people out there ripping people off – unfortunately there is a perception which becomes a vicious circle of "well they think we do it, so lets do it".

I’m very lucky I’ve worked with a wide range of motor traders and can quite easily get a feel for a good one and I’m lucky I’ve got an OK one down the end of my road – however they could be better but I trust them.

I’d never use Fast fit centres and the cost of main dealers and their shiny showrooms makes it a no go for me unless it has to go there.