hi guys, i bought a used car from Mitsubishi place about 2 month ago, we went to the car serves and they said the tyre are below 1.5, (minimum are 1.6)
so we went back to the Mitsubishi place and asked them if you guys can repair it because its still under warranty. they told me that the roadworthy was done and when you bought it the tyres are 1.6. but we just been droving around town, we hardly go anywhere. guys please tell me if they should get it fixed?
What country do you live in? Your laws may be different than they are here in the US, where if you buy a car from a used car dealer, it’s not their responsibility to make sure the tires have at least a minimum amount of tread before they sell the car (if there is such a law here, I don’t know about it).
Whether the tires had 1.6 mm tread or 1.5 mm tread when you bought the car, the tires were still practically worn out when you drove the car off the lot, and you would have had to replace them soon anyway. If you didn’t notice the very worn condition of the tires, that was your fault, not theirs.
I suggest you not waste time and effort trying to get anything out of the car dealer. You need a new set of tires. Do some research online and read some reviews before buying. Don’t let a tire dealer sell you whatever tires he has lying around and needs to get rid of.
Tire warranty is always separate from the vehicle warranty and only on new tires at that.
I also suggest you read the warranty you have so you really know what is covered.
Really? You bought a used car and want them to spring for new tires (a wear item)?
You might as well expect them to pay to fill up your tank, or change the oil!
Yep, these are the kind of things that are negotiated before the sale.
If you want new tires on a used car you have to negotiate that BEFORE you sign on the dotted line.
By the way, it sounds like the tires are too low to be safe regardless of the slight difference in depth readings, which will never all be exactly the same anyway. An accident from hydroplaning will be a heck of a lot more expensive than new tires.
Two months ago? Now you complain? Sorry, you haven’t a leg (or tyre) to stand on. Go buy some new ones and enjoy your BMW.
The difference between 1.6mm and 1.5mm of tread depth is not really perceptible to the naked eye, but even at 1.6mm, the OP should have noticed prior to purchase that the tires had very little tread left on them, and were not safe.
It is very possible that the OP could have negotiated the installation of new tires if he had demanded it, prior to purchase.
Negotiating new tires after buying the car?
Nope!
My advice for the OP is…
…replace those unsafe tires right away–at your own cost…
…take a careful look at the visible aspects of a used car before you buy the next one…
and…
have your own mechanic inspect a used car prior to purchasing it. If the previous owner was driving around on very badly-worn tires, just imagine how many other aspects of the car’s maintenance he may have ignored.
Excellent advice, VDC.
There seems to be a common misconception that as long as tires’ tread depth meets the state minimum, they’re safe. Nothing could be further from the truth. In adverse weather, any tire that has less than half its tread left has compromised performance. Any tire with less than 1/4 of its tread has SERIOUSLY compromised performance. Any tire whereupon the surface of the tread blocks is approaching the wear bars is no longer safe to drive on.
Tires have gotten expensive, but they’re still one he## of a lot cheaper than crashes… and a lot less painful that being injured or maimed.
Other than agreeing with everyone else, it kind of boggles my mind that someone would buy a car and not at least eyeball the tires during a walkaround.
If the car was sold with skimpy tire tread then I would suspect that the car was not checked over or serviced at all by the dealer who sold it.
It could be that other issues exist with the car and those may surface at some point; maybe sooner rather than later.
OK4450 said: “Other than agreeing with everyone else, it kind of boggles my mind that someone would buy a car and not at least eyeball the tires during a walkaround…”
Surprisingly, the average person doesn’t. And it gets worse when we include businesses who are supposed to be responsible for such things and take advantage of the fact that folks don’t.
A dealer is not likely to replace tires that have just enough tread to pass safety inspection. I don’t know where the OP lives, but he/she states the tread depth in metric terms. I’m not sure how those “translate”. Even if the tires were legally unsafe, and they probably were, it would have been better to discount the car and let the buyer choose his/her own tires. Perhaps the dealer did. That way the tire’s warranty (and recall registration) would be in the name of the buyer. Tire warranties are generally not transferable to a second owner. I’ve tried it.
That said, two months down the road, the buyer, who has disappeared from the discussion, is going to have to buy his/her own tires. Caveat emptor.
“it kind of boggles my mind that someone would buy a car and not at least eyeball the tires during a walkaround.”
I am beginning to think that all-too-many people’s approach to buying a used car is…I’ll take the shiny-looking one over there, and that even something as very basic as glancing at the tires never occurs to many people. Needless to say, more involved things like asking for maintenance records and getting a pre-purchase inspection are overlooked by far too many people.
But, I have to say that far too many people never bother to look at their tires even after they purchase a car. I can recall exiting the school building en masse many years ago, during a Friday fire drill. As I walked past the car owned by one of the secretaries, I couldn’t help noticing that one of her front tires was so badly-worn that the steel belt was exposed and was actually beginning to shred!
I immediately called it to her attention, and her reaction was something like…Well, maybe there will be a sale on tires next month…
I attempted to impress upon her that she was–literally–taking extreme chances with her own life and the life of her young daughter if she drove even one more day on those tires, but it seemed that she still failed to grasp the urgency of the situation. So, I tried a different tactic, and apparently it worked–I simply said, Debbie, please be sure to show the tire to your husband when you get home. On Monday, her car was sporting a new tire.
Even in parking lots, I often notice vehicles with…
tires that are bald…
tires that are almost flat…
and…my favorite…
tires that have been scraped along the curb so often that the white letters on the sidewall have become a massive, wide “whitewall”.
If people would only get “up close and personal” with their tires a couple of times each month in order to check the pressure, conditions like this would become obvious to them. Instead, it seems that many people pay more attention to sports scores than to something that can–literally–be a matter of life and death.
"it kind of boggles my mind that someone would buy a car and not at least eyeball the tires during a walkaround."I am beginning to think that all-too-many people’s approach to buying a used car is…I’ll take the shiny-looking one over there,
P. T. Barnum had something to say about such folks and their money…