New wheels didn’t need balanced?
My son bought some new alloy wheels for his car last week and a separate tyre package from one of the large UK tyre fitters. I called the garage up before hand and asked if they would take the tpms sensors off the old wheels and install onto the new ones. The guy on the phone was going through the computer trying to find the charge code for that and mentioned it would likely be around £100 mark per wheel. I mentioned that on their website it states £5.99 per wheel for tpms service which involves removing the sensor and fitting new valve etc so it was the same thing just the refit was on a different wheel. He agreed and said it would be fine.
Roll forward to the weekend and my son drops his car off and about an hour later gets a call saying they can’t remove the sensors from the old wheels and he’ll need to buy new hardware at £30 a wheel. I think the garage are at it so I go down with him to take a look and magically they have put the old tyres back onto the old alloys and I can’t see the sensors. I tell them that it’s ok and I’ll just sort the sensors at a later date and just want the tyres fitted with standard valves. He said fine and says to leave the wheels with him. He looked pretty annoyed but hey, not gonna let them rip my lad off.
On the Monday I get a call saying the wheels are ready. I nipped down and they are sitting beside the balance machine. I notice that none of them have any weights so I said to the same lad, “have you balanced these, I don’t see any weights on them”. He replied, “aye it’s sound mate, all good”, so I double checked again and he confirmed. I’ve brought them home but not fitted them yet.
Is it really possible that four new wheels can not need balanced? I’ve been driving for 30 years and had many new wheels/tyres and never had a wheel not need balanced.
I’ve not fitted them to the car yet to check for handling but the pessimist in me says he is a chancer and hasn’t done it. I also removed one of the old tyres from the original wheel and the TPMS sensor was a 20 second job to remove so he was not being honest there.