[Kristine]

Hi all,

I have a 98 Subaru Forester with about 160,000 miles on it. I bought all new tires for it less than two years ago -- they have maybe 10,000 miles on them. I got a flat tire, and the tire cannot be repaired. I brought the car back to the tire shop where I got the tires (a local place), and they told me that the tires are not being made anymore, and that I have to buy all four new tires. Is that really true? Everybody at work is telling me that I only at most should have to buy two new tires. I really can't afford all four tires again at this point, but nor do I want to mess up my car.

Thanks!

 

[Woody '04]

the short answer is yes, you may want all new tires to be on the safe side of not damaging the AWD system.

normally shops here give a good trade-in credit for used tires but since you said they quit making them i guess that means it is not an option? you may want to check with a few other places.

10,000 miles isn't that much and your car does have 160,000 miles on it so you may not want to put a lot of $ into it if you don't want to keep it forever. the circumference should be within 1/4 inch. if you had good tires (60,000 or 80,000 mile tires?!) you may want to go through the excercise of trying to measure tread depth and measuring the tire as best you can and doing the math to see how it turns out. this has probably already been done on the forum somewhere if you do some searches.

tire gauges measure in 32nds of an inch and you really can't read it much better than between 2 marks, or 1/64 inch. So, you could measure rough diameter and calculate circumference using the rough measurement as a baseline and then adding 1/64, 1/32, etc and recalculate to see how much (or little) difference in tread depth would be required to equate to 1/4 inch circumference.
Circumference = Pi * Diameter
Pi ~ 3.1416

 

[bellatech]

Sux...

I'm sorry to hear about your tire problem. Just recently, I found a gash in one of my sidewalls, not leaking air, but bad enough to pop with the right pothole. So, I had to replace all four (It was an excuse to get rid of the Geolanders tho).

Anyway, There are tons of great threads about shaving tires. It might be a pain, to be sure, but your only option (if you don't buy four new tires) is to purchase something VERY similar and shaving it down to match the circumference of your other three tires. Like I said, it's a pain, but def cheaper than buying all four. You might have to research where you might be able to shave a tire in your area. Some tire places will shave tires, some specialty racing shops/garages.

These threads may help:
One tire blown out. Replace all tires?
tire replacement after flat
do i need to replace all four tires?
Replacing 1-2 Tires, do I need to replace ALL?

 

[Kristine]

Thanks. I don't understand why the shop when I got the tire originally didn't tell me this -- at that time, I needed to replace all four tires, but I think that I would have gotten 5 at that time. and rotated them all (I get free tire rotation with the purchase of 4 tires. I am really bumming.

 

[funkymonkey1002]

What are the tires it has on now?

 

[Kristine]

I think they are uniroyals? at least three of them. they don't make this tire anymore unfortunately. can I at least sell them?

 

[Kristine]

I mean three of them are the uniroyals -- the fourth was my spare, which doesn't match.

 

[bellatech]

Yep...

Thanks. I don't understand why the shop when I got the tire originally didn't tell me this -- at that time, I needed to replace all four tires, but I think that I would have gotten 5 at that time. and rotated them all (I get free tire rotation with the purchase of 4 tires. I am really bumming.

Five tire rotation is the way to go. Gives just a bit more peace of mind.