Back to The Oil Can:
Because I don’t drive my little yellow convertible every day, I *completely* forgot to pay my insurance last September. I didn’t know that North Carolina requires auto insurance–I just assumed everyone has it because it’s a good idea–but no, it’s a requirement. When the sun came out in April and I finally remembered to get the car inspected, the state noticed I was uninsured and demanded that I give up my license tag for 30 days as a penalty.
After a month of “garage arrest,” I paid a fine (exorbitant!), got another license plate (the unattractive new red one), and got the car inspected (yeeha!) at The Oil Can. Remembering my brother-in-law’s advice, I asked about tires, and the staff explained about the whole expiration date issue: tires have a life span of about six years. Sometimes dealers stockpile tires, and you may end up with less shelf life than you thought. It’s not normally an issue–as a nation of car drivers, our tires rarely stop rolling long enough to get old–but it had become a problem for my car. I was experiencing dry rot!
Now, I don’t know everything about cars, but I do know that less scrupulous automotive professionals sometimes say things that aren’t *necessarily* true. Luckily, at The Oil Can, I feel like I can trust anything they tell me and safely follow their advice. They walked me through the best options for tires–more enduring v. more sport/performance–gave me an estimate on both series, and invited me to visit several online tire forums to see what other drivers with similar cars were saying about similar tires (one such site is www.tiretalk.com).
Long story short; at 7:30 am yesterday morning, “baby got a new set of shoes, ” as they say. Four brand new Yokahama S.drive tires (www.yokahamatire.com/tires/s.drive/aspx), and what a difference they make. I just thought the car cornered smoothly before–now it’s harder than ever to go through the more sedate process of braking and slowing down in corners rather than stack-shifting into the curve and flying out on the other side without losing too much momentum!
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it–but it can’t compare to how well I’m sticking to the pavement these days, thanks to The Oil Can!
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