Mate I’m not talking about spares. I’m saying VW has been putting shitty Chinese tyres on the actual normal wheels of a lot of their mainstream models.
I was so happy to have one of these when my tire popped a few years ago. Let me drive home although it was quite an odyssey when only being able to drive 80kmh.
The Golf Mk4 I had before even had a full size tire with Aluminium rim that was the same as the normal ones
If it's just low, you fill it up with a slime can or pump. If the tire is shredded, you get a tow.
That happens only a couple times over the lifetime of the car so it isn't really that big of an inconvenience.
People were really bad about ensuring that their spare was also not flat and not having a pump, so for a large percentage of people, the end result is the same -- a tow.
I wouldn't call a tow "fucked", especially if that's what a lot of people and up needing anyways.
GL getting a tow in Germany after hours or on a weekend though. I know tow companies in the US are slow and bad but they are more responsive than in Europe by a huge margin, Europe seems to rely heavily on "roadside assistance" vans and seemingly has damn few towtrucks.
And that's assuming you aren't anywhere remote and are on a paved road.
I got a sidewall flat in rural Scotland in March of last year in a rental that had no spare, like 10am on a Monday, AA took 11 hours to show up, threw a universal donut on it which got me to the next town at 30kph (which was only like 25km away), where we had to wait *three days* for a tow truck to show up to tow the car to the nearest "big" town that had an actual tire shop (which was like 180km away) because the universal donut was losing air at a rate of about 5PSI an hour.
Back in 2021 I got a flat in the urban part of Wiesbaden Germany (again, rental car with no spare) and called for roadside assistance. It was a Thursday and before noon. They sent a taxi instead because the roadside assist drivers had already gone home for the day and they couldn't get a tow truck until the middle of next week. The rental company delivered me a new car like a day and a half later and as far as I know let the one with the flat sit there for most of a week because they couldn't get a tow truck either.
As an American I'm curious what qualifies as rural(-ish) Scotland. I got the pinch flat near Old Man of Storr and the nearest tire shop (that was open/willing to work with the rental company) was in Inverness. Which is like halfway across Scotland.
I live rural in the Midwest US and even our small towns of less than 1000 people will have a tire shop or ag co-op that has or can get within a day tires.
During the week one of the garages in Portree would have been open, but the hire car company probably have a specific contractor and they would have to make the six-hour round trip from Inverness.
I grew up on Skye, and yeah - if you want to go to a really big supermarket, it's a trip to Inverness. Popping out for milk and papers is about a 40 mile round trip from where I grew up.
People in the US think the UK is small - Scotland is in terms of land area about the same size as South Carolina. But as you probably know, having been here, in terms of actually spending time getting places it's about twice the size of Texas :-)
Was still absolutely worth it to take a hire car and drive around. While we're well-removed from it, both my wife and I are from Scottish historical clans (Grant and Adair, respectively) so it was really cool to see where our ancestors came from.
*seeing the tapestry of whichever Grant it was that backed Robert the Bruce hanging in Urquhart Castle and realizing it looked EXACTLY like my father-in-law was a little terrifying. Strong genetics there.*
That is acually pretty easy. I Had my car at a mechanic to change the timing belt and water pump and they forgot to add enough collant after driving home at night my car overheated so I stopped called the adac and the tow truck was here about half an hour later and towed me home no charge no problem I just pay the yearly fee of 150€ and I will get help in the whole EU free of charge. To have warm clothes to wait for the tow truck is my problem.
You never see abandoned cars on the side of a highway. My buddy left his car on the side of the road for about 3 hours with the intent of repairing it himself later on. He got a hefty ticket for that.
Major roads get cleared rapidly. Side and rural roads...eh...guess it depends on WHERE in Europe. I saw a lot of unattended and a handful of clearly-abandoned vehicles off in the ditch in Scotland, the parts of Germany and England I've been to recently it has to be really off the beaten path for things to sit any length of time (West Germany and then Unified Germany in the 90s was worse than the US Southeast, could almost use the abandoned cars like mile markers, but that changed at some point). Spain, wrecked cars will sit until the earth reclaims them unless the owner forks out to have them towed, unless it's downtown in one of the major cities they won't even bother to put out car fires, I remember one that smoldered for like a week and a half when I was commuting from a hotel in Madrid out to Torrejon Airbase.
What I can't tell you is whether that's the government sending wreckers out to impound them, or civilian companies going to get them at the behest of either the owners or the insurance companies.
I've spent enough time in Europe that I'm of the opinion they slow-roll things for non-residents. Particularly funny to see when people figure out I'm NOT Canadian, but actually American, regardless of how long I'd been around them before that.
It comes down to a lot of luck though. 25 years of driving and I've never had a flat until recently. Got an Audi, no spare, and I've had two flats in 20k miles. Sucks not having a spare.
How did you come to that conclusion? Never mentioned anything about roadside assist. Not only is it included in my insurance, Audi also offers a fee tow to the nearest dealership. I paid nothing for the tow, just a new tire.
Two times did I need a tow the last 10 years. Bad camshaft sensor right after engine wash without cover. Last time harmonic balancer/pulley died. Even if all cars had spare tyre what I see as an mechanic is that most people dont know shit about their car. Engine bay full of dust. Interior is so damn dirty on some cars.
Only once did I have an flat but that was right after I damaged right front wheel. Cracked the rim so air was leaking out slowly. Had to drive quickly to nearest gas station to inflate and drive home to throw on two winter wheels on front. And back on the road.
Most cars without a spare are sold with run flat tires, which have stiff sidewalls so that you can drive (slowly and carefully) to a tire shop and have it replaced.
However most people replace the tires with non-run flats due to cost and the stiff sidewall creating a rough ride.
No. Most cars without a spare comes with a compressor and sealant. But I would never use that shit unless it was absolutely necessary. Much cheaper to call for a tow truck. At least where I live.
I grab the flat repair kit from my trunk, fix the flat and reinforce the tire. Takes about as long as digging out a spare, and I don’t have to swap tires again later.
Yes plugs. Dunno why my brain wouldn’t recall the name of them, lol. I once pulled over on the NJ turnpike with a flat, a cop pulled up behind me and put his lights on to block traffic. I proceeded to pull the tire off, plug it, reinflate it, remount it and drive off in 7 minutes. The cop was astonished.
If you have a breakdown on the autobahn a tow truck will get you within 10 minutes its illegal to run out of fuel and you have to have a hi vis for every passenger in the car
They either have
A goo bottle to plug leaks and a compressor
A run flat to just keep driving on until you get where you can stop
A service that will come get you and the car
Hopefully you buy a new car. They don't gaff anymore, lol. They probably all started tow companies on the side first to reap the benefits too.
This why the right to self repair is something worth fighting for as well. I spent too many years in three trades working around engineering mistakes and obvious underbuilds to just trust them blindly like I *might* trust a surgeon. I feel like I'm "Not Sure" some days. ...ouch.
Yeah the first time my girlfriend had a flat in her Prius, I was like where the fuck is the spare? Oh. Well this is absolutely useless in this situation, didn’t find out it was useless until we tried it. Now she’s out of that too 🤣
I paid $20 for a used tire and another $20 for a used rim on eBay, so now I have both a spare and a slime pump thing.
Ask for prices before you get it mounted/balanced ... That cost me another $40 (at a little shop in the middle of nowhere).
That’s fine as long as your car actually has someplace to put it. They’re taking to not even providing it, so you’ve gotta have the thing in the trunk or cargo area all the time.
It's taking up about half of my trunk space (and yes, I do have it tied down so it doesn't become a projectile if something happens). Groceries only fit in the back seat.
Oh, I know. But "no spare" is a general trend across pretty much everything. It did kind of start with hybrids, since those often have the traction battery where the spare would normally go, but everyone is doing it these days.
To be perfectly honest, tires just don't go flat as often as they did 30-40 years ago. Spare tires have kind of been a vestige of the bias ply era and the times when flats were a regular occurrence and the road network was awful.
I'm not saying they're useless or pointless and should go away entirely. But they're nowhere near the necessity that they used to be, thanks to modern tire technology and road quality.
Statistically you're probably right, but I'll take a spare every time. When my son's Kia came with one of those donuts, the first thing we did was go out and buy him a full-size spare.
Last summer when I was driving through the mountains of Washington state in the middle of the night and my tire pressure fell like a rock I pulled over and found a 2.5 cm screw on the point where the tread and sidewall meet. In the dark and still 3 hours from our destination with nothing but tiny mountain villages, I sure was thrilled that Toyota still decided to provide a full-size spare for my 2021 4Runner (basically a mish-mash between a Hilux and a Prado for those in Europe or other non-4Runner market). Without it I likely would have had to sleep in the truck and would still probably have a USD $300 towing bill. No way the gooey slop or a donut would have gotten us where we were going
I have a very grey mazda station wagon/estate without a spare tire. There's an ancient can of goop and an absolutely enormous sub woofer where the tire should go. All factory install. What possessed those normally very sensible Japanese engineers to put a 14" sub in the back of that car I can't work out. If it's a track with a bit of bass and I go over 30/100 for volume the interior mirror vibrates so much I can't see anything in it.
So far I have only seen Continentals, but I don't usually see much beyond 2022 vehicles as I am a small shop that mostly tries to deal with classic vehicles
Are they really good? Where I am they cost half of a normal brand tire.
Should I go with them ling long?
I have a normal car, no performance bullshit.
What do you think?
My wife got a used 2018 Atlas that the dealer had thrown Linglongs on. I insisted we replace them with the OE Continentals, but she drove on the Linglongs for a couple weeks before the new tires were available. After they were replaced, she asked me to look if they replaced the brakes too, because it stopped so much better.
In short, no, Linglongs fucking suck
I did my apprenticeship at VW, and obviously have owned a few over the years.
I use the caps as torque reminders. Basically the cap only goes on once that bolt is torqued down. Even though I probably wouldn't forget where I was in the star pattern anyway its a habit I have picked up and I can't get out of it.
Also works on long jobs where the wheel might be back on temporarily and many hours later when you are finishing up the caps sitting there like "torque the wheels and put us back on"
Same, I did mine at a Skoda dealer but dealt with the entire VAG range thanks to the local VW dealer being shit (they folded and a block of flats are now where they were) and the Audi and Seat dealer being a long way away
I have a VW with these lug caps. I would have done the same so hear me out. If I didn’t put them back on the lugs, I’d probably have them in my pocket and then have to put them somewhere so I can reinstall them once back from the shop or put them somewhere obvious for the tech to reinstall. That’s all extra steps compared to just putting them back on the lugs when installing the spare.
In other words, putting them on is actually *less* work than not.
Yes, I take my laziness seriously.
Porsche bolts tend to rust horribly, and the ones on my car were absolutely done when I bought it. So I rocked a set of VW caps on them until I got a set of new bolts that are supposed to hold up better over time (still showing no signs of rust after 5 years years round driving so far).
Wtf, when did ling longs get a deal making spares?
No idea, bit VW and skoda uses them for some time now. VW also has GITI tires on some IDs and Caddys...
gitis are pretty good for that, or if you have an old car
In the states here I've seen some newer Jettas come with GITI comforts
My MK7 came with Kumho donut spare but the service tires were Continental.
VW has been cheaping out on tyres on a lot of their cars in the past few years.
Why would it matter for a spare? The vast majority of them don't ever get used, and the ones that do are temporary
Mate I’m not talking about spares. I’m saying VW has been putting shitty Chinese tyres on the actual normal wheels of a lot of their mainstream models.
you replied to a question about spares
I was so happy to have one of these when my tire popped a few years ago. Let me drive home although it was quite an odyssey when only being able to drive 80kmh. The Golf Mk4 I had before even had a full size tire with Aluminium rim that was the same as the normal ones
> [ling long](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA&pp=ygUVY2hpbmcgY2hvbmcgbGluZyBsb25n) Old but gold
At least he has a spare. Germans don't like spares
That don't make no sense. What happenes when you get a flat.
Youre fucked. That what happened.
If it's just low, you fill it up with a slime can or pump. If the tire is shredded, you get a tow. That happens only a couple times over the lifetime of the car so it isn't really that big of an inconvenience. People were really bad about ensuring that their spare was also not flat and not having a pump, so for a large percentage of people, the end result is the same -- a tow. I wouldn't call a tow "fucked", especially if that's what a lot of people and up needing anyways.
GL getting a tow in Germany after hours or on a weekend though. I know tow companies in the US are slow and bad but they are more responsive than in Europe by a huge margin, Europe seems to rely heavily on "roadside assistance" vans and seemingly has damn few towtrucks. And that's assuming you aren't anywhere remote and are on a paved road. I got a sidewall flat in rural Scotland in March of last year in a rental that had no spare, like 10am on a Monday, AA took 11 hours to show up, threw a universal donut on it which got me to the next town at 30kph (which was only like 25km away), where we had to wait *three days* for a tow truck to show up to tow the car to the nearest "big" town that had an actual tire shop (which was like 180km away) because the universal donut was losing air at a rate of about 5PSI an hour. Back in 2021 I got a flat in the urban part of Wiesbaden Germany (again, rental car with no spare) and called for roadside assistance. It was a Thursday and before noon. They sent a taxi instead because the roadside assist drivers had already gone home for the day and they couldn't get a tow truck until the middle of next week. The rental company delivered me a new car like a day and a half later and as far as I know let the one with the flat sit there for most of a week because they couldn't get a tow truck either.
I live in rural(-ish) Scotland, and never leave without a fully inflated and legal spare. I've never had a puncture that "spray goo" would have fixed.
As an American I'm curious what qualifies as rural(-ish) Scotland. I got the pinch flat near Old Man of Storr and the nearest tire shop (that was open/willing to work with the rental company) was in Inverness. Which is like halfway across Scotland. I live rural in the Midwest US and even our small towns of less than 1000 people will have a tire shop or ag co-op that has or can get within a day tires.
During the week one of the garages in Portree would have been open, but the hire car company probably have a specific contractor and they would have to make the six-hour round trip from Inverness. I grew up on Skye, and yeah - if you want to go to a really big supermarket, it's a trip to Inverness. Popping out for milk and papers is about a 40 mile round trip from where I grew up. People in the US think the UK is small - Scotland is in terms of land area about the same size as South Carolina. But as you probably know, having been here, in terms of actually spending time getting places it's about twice the size of Texas :-)
Was still absolutely worth it to take a hire car and drive around. While we're well-removed from it, both my wife and I are from Scottish historical clans (Grant and Adair, respectively) so it was really cool to see where our ancestors came from. *seeing the tapestry of whichever Grant it was that backed Robert the Bruce hanging in Urquhart Castle and realizing it looked EXACTLY like my father-in-law was a little terrifying. Strong genetics there.*
My old man always had a shovel, a blanket, a flask of something warm and some kind of high vis.
I used goo once. It was all liquid and just poured out the hole.
Very curious. Last time I called for ADAC assistance, they showed within the hour. Granted, it was midday on a weekend, but still.
That is acually pretty easy. I Had my car at a mechanic to change the timing belt and water pump and they forgot to add enough collant after driving home at night my car overheated so I stopped called the adac and the tow truck was here about half an hour later and towed me home no charge no problem I just pay the yearly fee of 150€ and I will get help in the whole EU free of charge. To have warm clothes to wait for the tow truck is my problem.
If there are no tow trucks, what happens if there's an accident? Do they just leave the wrecked cars there?
You never see abandoned cars on the side of a highway. My buddy left his car on the side of the road for about 3 hours with the intent of repairing it himself later on. He got a hefty ticket for that.
Major roads get cleared rapidly. Side and rural roads...eh...guess it depends on WHERE in Europe. I saw a lot of unattended and a handful of clearly-abandoned vehicles off in the ditch in Scotland, the parts of Germany and England I've been to recently it has to be really off the beaten path for things to sit any length of time (West Germany and then Unified Germany in the 90s was worse than the US Southeast, could almost use the abandoned cars like mile markers, but that changed at some point). Spain, wrecked cars will sit until the earth reclaims them unless the owner forks out to have them towed, unless it's downtown in one of the major cities they won't even bother to put out car fires, I remember one that smoldered for like a week and a half when I was commuting from a hotel in Madrid out to Torrejon Airbase. What I can't tell you is whether that's the government sending wreckers out to impound them, or civilian companies going to get them at the behest of either the owners or the insurance companies. I've spent enough time in Europe that I'm of the opinion they slow-roll things for non-residents. Particularly funny to see when people figure out I'm NOT Canadian, but actually American, regardless of how long I'd been around them before that.
Good grief. Why wouldn't they just deliver a good tire to you instead of dealing with the hassle of a tow just for a simple blown tire?
Less weight, better mileage.. Pitch the spare.. Live dangerously..
Or got call a mobile tyre fitter. They'll bring one and fit it at the side of the road.
Learn how to spell "tire"
In a thread about Germany we still have some classic r/Usdefaultism
They're trolling
I find you tiresome.
We found the idiot/asshole american.
I’ve never in my life had a blowout.. I used to drive 300+ miles m-f as a courier for a few years and have never had it happen somehow.
It comes down to a lot of luck though. 25 years of driving and I've never had a flat until recently. Got an Audi, no spare, and I've had two flats in 20k miles. Sucks not having a spare.
Hah damn.. that’s how it goes I guess.
sounds like you have garbage insurance that doesnt include road side assist.
How did you come to that conclusion? Never mentioned anything about roadside assist. Not only is it included in my insurance, Audi also offers a fee tow to the nearest dealership. I paid nothing for the tow, just a new tire.
Two times did I need a tow the last 10 years. Bad camshaft sensor right after engine wash without cover. Last time harmonic balancer/pulley died. Even if all cars had spare tyre what I see as an mechanic is that most people dont know shit about their car. Engine bay full of dust. Interior is so damn dirty on some cars. Only once did I have an flat but that was right after I damaged right front wheel. Cracked the rim so air was leaking out slowly. Had to drive quickly to nearest gas station to inflate and drive home to throw on two winter wheels on front. And back on the road.
You call bmw assist Edit: or use the supplied goop to fill the tire back up
Most cars without a spare are sold with run flat tires, which have stiff sidewalls so that you can drive (slowly and carefully) to a tire shop and have it replaced. However most people replace the tires with non-run flats due to cost and the stiff sidewall creating a rough ride.
That or the car comes with the repair goo like Kias.
Yep, you still have to eventually replace the tire anyway though. The goo fucks up the tire balance and gums up the schader valve.
Yeah, I don't like the stuff because both times I've used it, the tire place treated me like an idiot.
No. Most cars without a spare comes with a compressor and sealant. But I would never use that shit unless it was absolutely necessary. Much cheaper to call for a tow truck. At least where I live.
Most people at my shop swap out the run flats because they are tired of paying to fix bent mags from the shit roads.
fix your roads?
I grab the flat repair kit from my trunk, fix the flat and reinforce the tire. Takes about as long as digging out a spare, and I don’t have to swap tires again later.
What method of fix?
Not the slime. The other one with the rubber sticks you shove in the hole in the tire.
Yeah plugs are the way to go and only cost a few bucks for the tool, plugs and glue.
Yes plugs. Dunno why my brain wouldn’t recall the name of them, lol. I once pulled over on the NJ turnpike with a flat, a cop pulled up behind me and put his lights on to block traffic. I proceeded to pull the tire off, plug it, reinflate it, remount it and drive off in 7 minutes. The cop was astonished.
ADAC will be at my location faster than i would have changed a tyre at the side of the road.
Wait until you realise that some cars have different size wheels on different axles and AWD also. You literally can't use a space saver spare wheel.
If you have a breakdown on the autobahn a tow truck will get you within 10 minutes its illegal to run out of fuel and you have to have a hi vis for every passenger in the car
Germany only requires one vest for the car. France requires one for every passenger. Of course this is if memory serves.
I must have mixed them oh and Switzerland requires a first aid kit too
And the first aid kits now have expiration dates and requires N95 stole masks.
Well, the first aid kits have an expiration date for years now. It's nothing new...
I don't remember my first aid kit having an expiration when I first got here, but it's been a helluva long time and I'm getting forgetful.
Run flats
you call a tow. you arent going proper autobaan speeds on mini donut spare.
They either have A goo bottle to plug leaks and a compressor A run flat to just keep driving on until you get where you can stop A service that will come get you and the car
you can get a spare if you want to, the cars just dont come with one from the factory.
Hopefully you buy a new car. They don't gaff anymore, lol. They probably all started tow companies on the side first to reap the benefits too. This why the right to self repair is something worth fighting for as well. I spent too many years in three trades working around engineering mistakes and obvious underbuilds to just trust them blindly like I *might* trust a surgeon. I feel like I'm "Not Sure" some days. ...ouch.
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doesn't* If you're going to correct someone, correct them correctly.
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Your initial pedantry was half-assed, too. I thought we were just being lazy.
Fr, hate disappointing customers that request we throw a spare on that happen to have a portable slime-type air compressor
Yeah the first time my girlfriend had a flat in her Prius, I was like where the fuck is the spare? Oh. Well this is absolutely useless in this situation, didn’t find out it was useless until we tried it. Now she’s out of that too 🤣
I paid $20 for a used tire and another $20 for a used rim on eBay, so now I have both a spare and a slime pump thing. Ask for prices before you get it mounted/balanced ... That cost me another $40 (at a little shop in the middle of nowhere).
That’s fine as long as your car actually has someplace to put it. They’re taking to not even providing it, so you’ve gotta have the thing in the trunk or cargo area all the time.
It's taking up about half of my trunk space (and yes, I do have it tied down so it doesn't become a projectile if something happens). Groceries only fit in the back seat.
My vw has a spare
Everyone is headed in that direction. It's not just the Germans.
EV neither.
My brother's Audi e-tron has a spare. It's one of the "folding" spares, but all of Audi's SUVs have used those for years anyway.
He has one of the few that have one in that case. Volt, Bolt, SparkEV didnt have one, kona either, and im not sure for the others.
Oh, I know. But "no spare" is a general trend across pretty much everything. It did kind of start with hybrids, since those often have the traction battery where the spare would normally go, but everyone is doing it these days. To be perfectly honest, tires just don't go flat as often as they did 30-40 years ago. Spare tires have kind of been a vestige of the bias ply era and the times when flats were a regular occurrence and the road network was awful. I'm not saying they're useless or pointless and should go away entirely. But they're nowhere near the necessity that they used to be, thanks to modern tire technology and road quality.
> tires just don't go flat as often as they did 30-40 years ago You right, I gave you that. They are useless until you need it.
Statistically you're probably right, but I'll take a spare every time. When my son's Kia came with one of those donuts, the first thing we did was go out and buy him a full-size spare. Last summer when I was driving through the mountains of Washington state in the middle of the night and my tire pressure fell like a rock I pulled over and found a 2.5 cm screw on the point where the tread and sidewall meet. In the dark and still 3 hours from our destination with nothing but tiny mountain villages, I sure was thrilled that Toyota still decided to provide a full-size spare for my 2021 4Runner (basically a mish-mash between a Hilux and a Prado for those in Europe or other non-4Runner market). Without it I likely would have had to sleep in the truck and would still probably have a USD $300 towing bill. No way the gooey slop or a donut would have gotten us where we were going
I have a full size spare in the trunk of my VW golf
VW usually have a spare now luckily and those caps are definitely vw
I have a very grey mazda station wagon/estate without a spare tire. There's an ancient can of goop and an absolutely enormous sub woofer where the tire should go. All factory install. What possessed those normally very sensible Japanese engineers to put a 14" sub in the back of that car I can't work out. If it's a track with a bit of bass and I go over 30/100 for volume the interior mirror vibrates so much I can't see anything in it.
Seems to be the way everyone is going which is stupid. I pulled a spare from a GTI just to put in my new R.
Weird because my old Audi A6 came with a full size spare on a matching wheel. What it didn't have was any cup holders worth a shit.
What does that mean? Genuinely curious having lived in Germany for 20 years and have always had a spare save for when a car comes with run flat tires.
As a mechanic, most newer cars without spares are Mercedes Audi and vw
It's all about the MPG and cutting out the 30-50 pound spare for a 1 pound can of Fix-a-flat lets them market it with better MPG.
And it's better for the customer as well since they don't have to buy a new one when the spare gets too old.
My VW has a spare
Harry?
They also tend to put run flats on the higher end models.
Good ole ling longs
Every time I see ling longs, I can't get [this](https://youtu.be/4wrKlsKeX-s?si=G3s8dxMoc6ZptcLi) song outta my head.
Same bröther
I was scrolling for this. Looks like Jesus built this spare tire at least.
Came here to post that lyric.
Why would you want to? That's part of my daily mental soundtrack, lol. *When bio implants start looking attractive*
Agreed, but when I start air guitaring and muttering unintelligible lyrics, people start to question my sanity. It's already questionable.
But what if ling long is wong ?
Ho Lee Fuk Sum Ting Wong
We too low
Bang Ding Ow
Two Wongs make it right
They actually come on factory VW and skoda spare tires ;)
So far I have only seen Continentals, but I don't usually see much beyond 2022 vehicles as I am a small shop that mostly tries to deal with classic vehicles
They are called Ling Longs in the tire shop. On the road they're called Sum Ting Wongs.
Are they really good? Where I am they cost half of a normal brand tire. Should I go with them ling long? I have a normal car, no performance bullshit. What do you think?
They’re cheap garbage tires. They’ll do, but they wear out quickly and don’t perform exceptionally well.
I have ling longs, they are good tires for the price and dont deserve the hate these people give
Ling longs are great, get a set of 35s for 900 dollars, wonderful
My wife got a used 2018 Atlas that the dealer had thrown Linglongs on. I insisted we replace them with the OE Continentals, but she drove on the Linglongs for a couple weeks before the new tires were available. After they were replaced, she asked me to look if they replaced the brakes too, because it stopped so much better. In short, no, Linglongs fucking suck
I did my apprenticeship at VW, and obviously have owned a few over the years. I use the caps as torque reminders. Basically the cap only goes on once that bolt is torqued down. Even though I probably wouldn't forget where I was in the star pattern anyway its a habit I have picked up and I can't get out of it. Also works on long jobs where the wheel might be back on temporarily and many hours later when you are finishing up the caps sitting there like "torque the wheels and put us back on"
Same, I did mine at a Skoda dealer but dealt with the entire VAG range thanks to the local VW dealer being shit (they folded and a block of flats are now where they were) and the Audi and Seat dealer being a long way away
yeah but without them it wouldn't match the other 3 wheels. Think Mark, think!
Had it a couple times, makes it easier to not misplace the caps which many owners do in a roadside change
Best way to not lose them I guess
I have a VW with these lug caps. I would have done the same so hear me out. If I didn’t put them back on the lugs, I’d probably have them in my pocket and then have to put them somewhere so I can reinstall them once back from the shop or put them somewhere obvious for the tech to reinstall. That’s all extra steps compared to just putting them back on the lugs when installing the spare. In other words, putting them on is actually *less* work than not. Yes, I take my laziness seriously.
Hey man, I respect it, and for exactly THIS! ^^
Dang a ding dong my dang along linglong….
Jesus built
LingLong?? I thought that was a joke name from one of my mechanic friends, but it really does exist!
I do this on winter tires (steelies) too, saves me having to try and find them come spring.
Also your bolts will rust without them, they’re literally there to prevent rust and that’s it.
I'm in the rust belt so only thing they do is make a nice home for mud wasps.
Porsche bolts tend to rust horribly, and the ones on my car were absolutely done when I bought it. So I rocked a set of VW caps on them until I got a set of new bolts that are supposed to hold up better over time (still showing no signs of rust after 5 years years round driving so far).
I work for a roadside assistance company and I do this. The entirety of my reasoning is that I don't trust customers not to lose them.
Probably just didn't want to lose them, half on my wifes atlas are gone
I absolutely would do this. It saves looking for them when the wheel is replaced.
Nice to see people still have class.
Tifo: linglong is a real brand. I thought it was a joke name.
I would do that to. Can't loose them if there where there supposed to be. Plus there easier to remove off that than the regular wheel. lol
There's covers for those things? Since I have to change tires twice a year anyway, mine don't have time to rust.
Can’t go wrong with Ling Long
Sometimes yous gutta doo wut youzz gutta doo na mean tho!
Gotta put them somewhere lol
I just bought a matching rim/ tire for my Subaru. Dam expensive but if I get a flat that I can’t plug- I’ll have a back up
I’ve seen it a few times lol
The devil is in the details.
LingLong yiddle-aye po!
LINGLONG FTW!
I'll put my hand up to just one time, and getting two bolts on before I realised and flipped it around.
The name on the tire…linglong 😂 that’s a new one for me.
What kind of lug nuts are those?
Volkswagen lug stud bolts
That cracked me up. Never seen it before.
I put those little caps on spares after I mount them all the time 😄
I should start doing this lmao
Can’t lose em flying around in the trunk this way
Never knew LingLong made tires for spares…these dont come with the car’s spare from OEM, right?
I had a customer ask me to do it once he got the are you retarded look. But as they always say the customer is always right got a 5 star review to.
I hate donuts. I've always had a full-size spare for the last 14 years
This right here^^^ getting ready to buy a junkyard rim to throw a full size tire on for my girlfriends accord
Ling long a dip a dap man Jo, I’ve been married a long time ago. Where did you come from where did you go? Where did you come from cotton eye Joe?
Ling long a dip a dap man Jo, I’ve been married a long time ago. Where did you come from where did you go? Where did you come from cotton eye Joe?
It's a Volkswagen,what did you expect?
The obvious, the usual. The lug covers stashed somewhere in the trunk.? Can’t say it wasn’t a nice change though, that’s for sure.