Check both Front and rear tyre sizes before ordering.

If you are about to order new tyres for your vehicle, depending of the make of car it may be worth checking the sizes on the front and rears, as some cars have different sizes front and rear. This is especially the case on some BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar models.

Last week I was called out to Aldwick do a job on a Mercedes CLK, this was the first time this customer had used a Mobile tyre fitting service and the customer had ordered tyres online, after checking just the front wheel size. Luckily our sales people at Hometyre called to confirm the time of fitting and asked if they had checked both sizes before ordering. This prompted the customer to go out to the vehicle and check, they then called us back to say that the sizes were different and could we change the order. Tyre sizes are shown on the side walls of all tyres, there is also information as to the tyre speed and loading as well as date codes. On this Mercedes the front tyres were 205/55R16, and the rears were 225/50R16. Changing and order like this is no problem, we would rather do this than turn up at a job with the wrong size tyres and find the problem then, as that means we have to make a return trip, which wastes time and fuel.

Once the correct tyres were ordered, I then turned up on the day with all four tyres, asked the customer for the car keys and If she knew the location of the locking wheel nut. She did, as her husband had pointed it out the day before, this saves me time in hunting around the car looking for it.

I jacked the car up and soon got to work changing the tyres, again because of the different tyre sizes, I like to work on both fronts first then both rears, as this way I only have to reset tyre changing equipment in the van and the wheel balancing machine once between changes.I soon had all four tyres changed and pumped up to the correct pressures, the wheels were put back on the car and torqued to the correct settings. The locking wheel nut key was put back into the boot and recorded on our invoice as to its location.

I then took payment using our debit card reader, and emailed the receipt through to the customer.