Schadenfreude

I bought my TL on May 1st of this year. Last week an old man ran a stop sign and T-boned my car on the passenger side. Aside from the need-to-puke feeling of my new car being smushed...luckily, no injuries and his insurance is paying for the whole thing.

Problem is: insurance will replace both tires on the passenger side. But that leaves me with 2 tires with 5,500 mile wear, and 2 brand new tires. This does not sound like "pre-accident condition" to me. I tried calling my insurance company and ask for all 4 tires to be replaced, but they said they cover items damaged in the accident only, and that the other 2 are fine.

But this leaves me with the problem of either 1) shelling out for 2 new tires myself right now, or 2) forever having unevenly worn tires or 3) eventually paying for 4 new ones to get them back to even.

Has anyone had any experience with this? Is there anything I can do? They said they need proof that the 2 tires are damaged and compromise the safety of my car to replace them. And this needs to come from the auto body shop with proof of cupping/balance problems.

Thank you so much...

Repecat

I would be very surprised if the insurance co would replace the undamaged tires. What I would do is put the new tires on the front and old ones on the rear. Chances are that the fronts will wear faster than the rears (unless you customarily carry a lot of weight in the rear), thus you will eventually "even out" the wear among all four tires. Glad there were no injuries.

06_TL

it's not that big of deal. like repecat said, place the new wheels in the front and used in the rear. same thing happened to me when i got t-bonned. they only replaced 2 tires so i just put them in the front and everything worked out fine.

Pure Adrenaline

iTrader: (2)

5,500 miles isn't that bad.

Almost always, I suggest putting new tires in the rear, regardless of drivetrain configuration. But again in this situation, 5,500 miles of wear won't really matter.

Just make sure that the old and new ones are installed front to back, not side to side. That could potentially mess with ABS and VSA.

Schadenfreude

Thanks for the responses...I'm just all upset over it happening and wanted it as close to perfect as possible. I will have them mount the new tires in the rear.