Good evening
It's not often I come across customer service worthy of praise but this last weekend, I did come across a company and a team that showed that real customer service isn't dead.
The story started with a catastrophic RH rear tyre failure on the
Hundewagen, just the SA side of Horsham.
As the van is only equipped with an 80 km/h speed limited spare (205/60R16 compared to the fitted tyres 225/55R17) and the speed limiting being because it isn't 101Y load rated, it was going to be a slow 484 km to Adelaide.
After calling every country tyre dealer in between and finding no one with that size in stock, I went looking for a dealer close to the destination and as they are Continental PremiumContact tyres, I ended up calling BestDrive in Nailsworth who are a Continental dealer.
After several, what must have been annoying phone calls, they had the correct size in a 101W MaxContact and so the van went there first thing Monday morning to have that one replaced.
While the vehicle was there they spotted that both front tyres, despite only being 14k km old, looked like this ...
.. which basically meant they were dangerous and I hadn't spotted the wear in my usual check of pressures and tyre condition becasue you couldn't see the wear as it was right on the inner edge of both.
We ended up fitting 4 new ones and I'll take up the abnormal wear with the people who did the last wheel alignment when they were fitted - ironically, those tyres had already been replaced under warranty after the previous wheel alignment saw them worn the same way after 15k km.
The wheel alignment has never been great since the day it was new. It has always pulled to the left a fair bit but M-B put it down to our different camber here compared to EU roads.
The alignment guy at BestDrive (Peter) has nailed it first time. It now tracks straight and true and looking at the alignment report it was actually the rear toe (LH -3.2mm / RH +1.7mm) that was causing the issue because it created a thrust angle of 0
o.12' where it is now almost where it should be at 0
o/02'.
For those who don't know, thrust angle is an imaginary line that is drawn perpendicular from the centre-line of the rear axle, down the centre-line of the vehicle. The purpose of the thrust angle is to determine if the rear axle is lined up with the centre of the vehicle, as well as the front axle. The thrust angle also determines if the wheel base on both sides of the vehicle is the same and is particularly critical on vehicles with 4-wheel independent suspension. Ideally it should be zero.
So to Andrew and the rest of the team there who all pitched in to help, a big thanks from both of us and if you're in Adelaide, it's worth driving there for good service and good advice.
As well as Continental, they also deal in Kumho, BFG and Mickey Thomson tyres and probably others as well.