I took my Touareg to my dealer (Timmons VW, Long Beach, CA)yesterday to have my new VW Karthoum wheels installed. Rather than have the new wheels mounted and balanced at the dealer, the service rep decided to send then the wheels and tires next door to the high-performance wheel shop so the wheels could be balenced at high speed. I thought that was a great idea.
I got the car back several hours later. The rep told me that it would take a few miles for the TPMS sensors to "re-set" and to ignore any warning on the MFD. Naturally, I ignored the "flat tyre" indicator until a motorist on the freeway honked at me and yelled that I had a flat tire! Apparently, I had driven about 10 miles on a front flat tire.
When a freeway service patrol stopped to offer assistance, I had him try and inflate the tire to get me off the freeway. When he tried to attach the air hose to the valve on the flat, the TPMS sensor attached to the valve came apart in his hand.
I had the truck flat-bedded back to the dealer courtesy of VW towing assistance. The dealer had a 2004 V8 loaner with less than 500 miles waiting for me.
Fortunately, there was no damage to the new wheel and the dealer replaced the tire and pulled all of the other wheels of the truck to verify the TPMS sensors were installed correctly.
Although I was quite mad at the situation, I was very impressed with the no-nonsense approach the dealer took to rectify things. Even though the high performance wheel shop next to the dealer screwed up in their TPMS attachment, the service rep had tried to do the right thing in "thinking out of the box" and figuring that I might want something higher than an 80mph balance!
The bottom line to all of this: Double and triple check your TPMS sensors after any wheel and tire work and don't be too quick to over-look the MFD readout, no matter what the service rep tells you!
I got the car back several hours later. The rep told me that it would take a few miles for the TPMS sensors to "re-set" and to ignore any warning on the MFD. Naturally, I ignored the "flat tyre" indicator until a motorist on the freeway honked at me and yelled that I had a flat tire! Apparently, I had driven about 10 miles on a front flat tire.
When a freeway service patrol stopped to offer assistance, I had him try and inflate the tire to get me off the freeway. When he tried to attach the air hose to the valve on the flat, the TPMS sensor attached to the valve came apart in his hand.
I had the truck flat-bedded back to the dealer courtesy of VW towing assistance. The dealer had a 2004 V8 loaner with less than 500 miles waiting for me.
Fortunately, there was no damage to the new wheel and the dealer replaced the tire and pulled all of the other wheels of the truck to verify the TPMS sensors were installed correctly.
Although I was quite mad at the situation, I was very impressed with the no-nonsense approach the dealer took to rectify things. Even though the high performance wheel shop next to the dealer screwed up in their TPMS attachment, the service rep had tried to do the right thing in "thinking out of the box" and figuring that I might want something higher than an 80mph balance!
The bottom line to all of this: Double and triple check your TPMS sensors after any wheel and tire work and don't be too quick to over-look the MFD readout, no matter what the service rep tells you!
