New tyres caused £1400 damage

Walkingthepeaks

Thought I would post this as a warning to others but also see if anyone can help.
Trying to save some money on 2 new tyres, we ordered some from an Internet company, they provided a list of garages that would fit them, so we purchased a voucher for fitting and had the tyres delivered to the garage. A few days later wr went to the garage and the tyres were fitted (2 front tyres). Then on the way home, about 7 miles, there was a bang at the back of the car and the 4 wheel drive light came on. We set it to 2 wheel drive and gingerly drove the rest of the journey (about a mile) home.
To cut a long story short, we had ordered the wrong size tyres (255 instead of 225). The garage did not mention this when fitting and we did not check at the garage as we needed to get back. If you have different size tyres on a 4x4, then this turns the ales at different speeds, resulting in our case the back differential to break. We managed to secure a second hand one and the bill was still 1400.
Although it was our fault ordering the wrong size tyres, I feel that the garage that fitted them should bear some of the responsibility, but have had no luck so far.
According to consumer rights, the company that supplied the tyres are responsible, as the garage was their agent, but they just say they supplied what was ordered. We tried the credit card company but same response. Finally obudsman, but company not in scheme so they could not do anything.
Just wondered if anyone any ideas, do i pursue the garage that fitted, or do I just put it down to a very expensive mistake.

burlington6

Hahaha......good one

BeenThroughItAll

It's not unusual for someone to have different sized tyres fitted to a car, for all sorts of reasons. You purchased a voucher for FITTING two tyres, which YOU ordered. If you wanted the tyre fitters to check everything was OK with the tyres YOU ordered, you should have explicitly asked them to do so - otherwise their responsibility was to FIT two tyres YOU ordered.

See where I'm going with this?

Only person "responsible" here is YOU, I'm afraid.

pappa_golf

where any puppys killed ?

sillygoose

Misleading title, the new tyres didn't cause £1400 of damage.

Not properly checking the numbers on the existing tyres sidewall and double checking what you had selected on the website before getting all clicky-clicky did £1400 of damage. The tyres were fine.

But you know that. Do you not feel dishonest trying to get someone else to pay for your mistake? I couldn't do it, It would feel like fraud to me.

worried_jim

At least the OP hasn't had the gall to name both companies.

AdrianC

Walkingthepeaks wrote: »

Then on the way home, about 7 miles, there was a bang at the back of the car and the 4 wheel drive light came on. We set it to 2 wheel drive and gingerly drove the rest of the journey (about a mile) home.

What 4wd are we talking about?
What centre diff does it have? Viscous, lockable?
Why were you in 4wd on tarmac?

rich13348

1. The internet tyre companies I have used explicitly tell you to check the sizes on the tyres themselves to avoid mistakes.
2. Why do you need 4 wheel drive on in summer on tarmac. All it does is make it harder to go round corners if the rear diff locks at the same time.

Herzlos

That was my first thought - if it's controllable 2wd/4wd, !!!!!! were you running in 4wd mode home from the garage, in June?

I know mismatched tyres can wind up the diff (hence the recommendation to rotate them regularly) but I'm surprised it'd happen in 4 miles. 225 to 255 is quite a difference though, I mean it's about 2" wider for a start, and depending on profile it could be a lot larger radius.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Lots of people order the wrong things for their cars, from tyres to brakes to wiper blades.

Internet buying may not be the best option for people not mechanically minded enough, going to an indy tyre shop or to their garage to supply and fit the correct parts might be the best plan for some.

I would have thought it would be the centre diff or viscous coupling that would have suffered, not the rear diff, depends on make and design i s'pose, some rear diffs only come into action once in a blue moon so arn't going to be built like a Landcruiser Amazon.

AdrianC

I can't think of anything that has part-time selectable 4wd with a viscous (or other type of self-locking) centre diff. If it has full-time 4wd, there won't be a "2wd mode".

There's really very few 4wds that don't have any form of locking centre diff - because a loss of traction on just one corner would lose all drive.

If the centre diff was unlocked, then there would not be sufficient driveline wind-up within just seven miles to break the rear diff.

So... either it's something that has a separately lockable centre diff which was locked, or it's something that doesn't have a centre diff at all.

It's entirely possible that the tyre fitters put it into locked-diff 4wd mode while changing the tyres - perhaps so that the handbrake acted on all four wheels - but that's not an excuse, because the OP should certainly have checked before driving off. I suspect the warning light had been on all the time, and they only actually noticed when it went bang.

As far as I can see, this really can only be driver error compounding the error in ordering the tyres. But I'm very happy to be proved wrong by the OP telling us what vehicle it is with such an unusual drivetrain, or the road conditions that necessitated 4wd-locked diff being selected.