After buying a used 2004 Toyota Sienna Limited, I wanted to get winter tires, mounted on cheap wheels, without breaking the bank. I also wanted to use the same tire size as the summer tires -- 17" -- so that I could just keep one set of snow chains that worked on both sets of tires. The largest I'd had before was 15", so normally this would cost quite a bit more than I was used to.
Doing that through tirerack dot com or Discount Tires would be over $900 all told. Instead, I found a local guy on Craigslist who was selling his barely-used excellent brand winter tires because he was moving to southern California. He was asking $200 and accepted my offer of $150. Next I needed to find a good price on wheels.
Budget Auto Wrecking had them, and for only $25 each. They're ugly but that's what I expected. I might repaint them this summer. Most of the wheels they offer for that are not ugly, but they did not have as many 17s as smaller sizes. I wonder if that's due to less supply or higher demand, or both.
I was also pleased and startled that they would mount and balance them for only $15 each! I don't remember when I've paid so little. Lately it's been nearly twice that. So for only $160 I got a set of 4 wheels and got the tires mounted and balanced on them. Grand total including the sales tax I paid Budget, $326.
And Budget will now be my go-to place for having any tires mounted and balanced. On the other hand, come to think of it just now as I'm writing this, I don't know if $15 is a special price for if you're also buying the wheels.
FWIW there was a bit of a language barrier; English seems to be a 2nd language for everyone in the tire shop. There were a couple of times when I just could not understand something they were asking me until they'd repeated it a couple times. But they were all super friendly and helpful. And I don't think even the high end fancy performance shops have more competent people mounting and balancing tires.
Oh -- don't come here in nice dress clothes. This is a greasy, dirty place. I don't blame them at all for that; for prices this good with service this good, that comes with the territory. Just dress down in old clothes, and wear sneakers, and if you're going to put wheels inside your minivan or wagon, bring plenty of blankets or something to put them on so you don't end up having to clean dirt and grease off of the interior. I brought one blanket but should have brought more. It kept the carpet clean but I had to clean dirt & grease off of the leather seats.
If I could do it all over again, I'd go with the 16" wheel & tire size from the other Sienna trim levels (XLE, LE. etc) instead of 17". Both the tires and wheels are so much more plentiful. It would have been much less work and time overall to just have two sets of snow chains for the two different sizes of tires! read more