Just got new tires at local shop which messed up (scratched and gouged) the lip of my rash-free Virgos. What are my options for getting them back to the way the were? Is it better to get them refinished/repaired or start looking for replacements? What does repair cost for this type cosmetic fix? Aren't freight charges prohibitive? Who's good at this repair? I figure excellent Virgos are $300 or $400 plus freight.

Guess I need to learn how to mount my own tires. Very frustating! Thanks.

Tires go on from the back on Virgo's.
I hope they know that.
--
71-145-S ; 72-145-E ; 72-1800-ES

Make them pay to replace the scratched wheels. Whether you're forgiving and allow them to replace them with good used ones or charge them for full restoration, there's no reason you should pay for their mistake.

They agreed to pay for restoration at a local shop!!! I'm still in shock. Now if they can just get that right. We shall see.

I am glad they are going to take care of you, good help is hard to find these days and at least the shop stepped up.

This is not on the order of magnitude as scratches on Virgos by any means, but had a issue on my wife's Ford Taurus with a brake rotor that cracked from the bolt hole to the center hub hole just after a rotation. You should have felt the shimmy when that rotor cracked. Went to the shop and told the manager that the bolts were over torqued and he of course told me how they checked that with a wrench every time. Walked with him over to the window and watched his guy impact a couple of wheels on a customers car and then sure enough clicked every nut with a wrench. The manager proudly told me how they checked everything 100% and had a table of settings for almost every car. He grabbed the table and showed me that the setting for that wheel was 90 ft/lbs just like my Ford. Then he showed me the wrench and it was set correctly to 90. Asked if I could try something real quick with the wrench and he hesitated and said OK. Took the wrench and moved it up to 120 Ft/Lbs and two of the nuts clicked right off the bat, and the other three had less than a turn before they clicked. They were impacting those nuts on to who knows how much torque and then if the wrench clicked called it good. He shook his head asked me to bring in the receipt. They know about this sort of stuff, you just have to get them to admit they were at fault.

Hopefully you will be happy with the results and get your near perfect Virgos back.

Regards,

PT

It's amazing how many horror stories there about indifferent or incompetent repair places. It's always somebody else's fault!

I became so frustrated with local tire merchants, I started rotating my own tires about five years ago on both my 245 and my 944. I bought a Sears torque wrench and use a manual tie iron for the 5K-mile ritual. Since then rotor problems have been minimized. I save time because I don't have to schedule the service, wait on my car or waste time returning for shoddy work. Plus it's easy to place blame when there's a problem :-)

The biggest mistake I ever made was having my tires balanced at each rotation. I find that while tires do need rotating, they typically do not need balancing unless there some kind of shaking or vibrating. That assumes the balance was done correctly when the tires were first installed. I just wore out a set of Michelin Pilots on my 240 at 55k miles. I rotated on schedule and never had them balanced after Costco installed them.
Enough of my theories!

Are the scratches from removing old wheel weights?

Virgos are fairly soft wheels. Curb rash and small scratches can be taken out with sand paper. I use a wet/dry paper, starting with something like a 320 grit, then a 800 and finally a 1200 grit, then repaint.

Good luck,

--
Don - '89 744ti, '85 Alfa GTV6

nah, the weights were on the back of the rim. When I took it back to tire store, the rep actually admitted his tech had erred in mounting the tire. He described what had happened based on the damage. Very commendable and unusual!!

Always wanted an Alfa. How do you like yours?