So I went to discount tire and was quoted $70+ tax to mount two 275/40/17 on some 17x9 aluminum wheels. Seemed super steep, anyone have any recommendations? Thanks again
The tire shops on Harry Hines will do it for like $10 per wheel. If they ask for a lot more then go across the street.
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Discount Tire in general is a bad move. If you must go to a chain shop, try Firestone. But generally, like @lukeiamyourfather says, you’ll get a better deal at shady tire shops in the ehhhh part of town.
I’ll echo that sentiment. My brother, penny pincher extraordinaire and ancient Honda owner at the time of his visit to these parts, dug up a NOS 13" radial for his 1985 Accord, but wasn’t about to pay the ask on M&B, so walked Harry Hines tire shops while his wife was hunting fabric at the likes of Golden D’Or. Got that mounted, balanced, & out the door for ~MXN$188.00.
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They’re not shady. They just don’t put on a show and dance with fancy signs and marketing. Every experience I’ve had has been excellent (mounting and balancing, bent wheel repair, patches).
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I also use a local tire shop about a mile from house. It’s an old building but the service is fast excellent. Low cost.
Recently had S & W Tire Company (a little north of DMS in Carrollton) fix a slow leak. I highly recommend them. (As a bonus, you can meet the stray cat they are caretaking until they find him a home.)
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You don’t even have to go drive Harry Hines for non-chain tire shops. There’s a nice guy at the corner of Valley View and … Broadbank? The street that the DART train runs along, just one block east of the service road. I bought a used tire from him last year, and he was right in line with the Harry Hines guys. I think I spent $40, and that was for a tire, dismount and remount and the whole nine yards…
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I think u are thinking of Broadway.
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Probably. Most likely.
Gonna throw in one possible caveat: I can’t speak for D/FW on this at all, but at least in Houston there was one Discount Tire (possibly more) that a number of regulars in the Porsche racing group down there (wasn’t a member, but I did go to a rich-kid school so I had friends whose parents could afford to do that shiz) would go to all the time for this stuff. What they had (and, to my understanding, many Discount Tires have – though whether they’re well trained to use it is probably a huge question mark) is the fancy Hunter Road Force balancer. It was at the time “common knowledge” that folks getting a standard weight-based balance would often run into noise and vibration issues at higher speeds on new tires, and getting them balanced with the fancy-pants machine did actually solve that issue for them. I imagine there are some mom-and-pops that have one of those too, but I have yet to see one.
Yes, anecdotal, YMMV, etc. I’ll also point out that basically every one of these guys was a “special-case” driver. They’d tell you straight up it was probably a waste of time to bother with that on your 2013 Camry. And this was right after I graduated high school and I’m pretty sure the Road Force thing came out right around then so there was probably a “hot new thing” effect in play too. (They still swear by it, but old habits do die hard, so again who knows.) But their stance was that if you had low-profile tires and/or were planning on driving, ya know, fast – then yes, there was a benefit and it was worth it.
(For what it’s worth, I went ahead and quickly Googled the matter hoping to not invest much time in it but at least see if what I’d heard anecdotally was now universally considered pure bupkus – I can’t vouch for what I found, I know nothing about the site or its credibility, but the first and only link I clicked on on the subject seemed to concur with what I was told regarding when it was and wasn’t useful: http://www.tirereview.com/when-is-it-overkill/)
I dunno – made some sense to me; what do you guys think?
Without discussing your year of graduation from high school, nor any of the other points in this post, Hunter started selling “road force”-style balancers ca. 1998
meaning, in large, they’ve “always been around” for this youngster…
Honestly, I thought I remembered seeing them for at least a 1/2 decade prior to that, but have yet to unearth “proof”.
Yup, then not long after high school for me. (more specifically: between when I left the state to go to college in Oklahoma and when I left mid-degree and came back to Texas to finish because Oklahoma is the closest thing to hell I’ll ever likely experience in my life.)
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There’s a scene in “Love and a .45” where the male lead is telling Renee Zellweger’s character he has to go to Mexico, but he wouldn’t ask her to come. Her response: “Mexico! Baby, I’d follow you to Oklahoma!”
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Have you tried hairspray?
Balancing your own wheels isn’t possible with the newer high-setback alloy ones unless you own one of those pricy electronic rotary balancers. You have to balance both the lateral and radial directions and those simple bubble level tools can only do the lateral balancing.
I still prefer the “vintage” way of balancing wheels and tires in the “olde days” when they balanced the wheel and tire on the vehicle - that way the entire rotating assembly was balanced.
That required more time and heaven forbid a technician actually took the TIME to do something without rushing to the “next” paying job in the average franchise today.
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…I’m gonna assume you’re kidding. 
Applies a lateral pressure to the wheel (hence “road force”). Apparently susses out more potential problems while it’s on the balancer itself than a standard balance would. (Plus just a smidge more pricey than the HF balancer you linked to…) Supposedly something even the “good old days” balancing on the vehicle method can’t pull off. Like I said: I’m not personally vouching for it’s efficacy, but I know more than a few folks that would, especially at high (well above highway) speeds.
Road Force balancers were the only way to keep my older 92 Miata from shaking apart between 65 to 75mph.
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