The Valve Stem Story

Sooo, gentle readers, this might bore a good number of you. Well, since I probably have three readers, it might bore two of you. Anyhoo...You know the little thingy that you use to put air into your tires? I just learned today it is called a valve stem. Well, one of mine was broken. It was leaking air and every time I tried to put air into my tire it just leaked out more. So off I went to the local tire place and a nice guy came out to the lot and looked at my offending stem and informed me that they couldn't fix it because it has a sensor built into it that lets me know when my tires are low. (so that's what that light meant!) I don't know about you, but I've lived just fine without this help for many a year now... So he told me I would have to take it to my dealership to get fixed. Very long, boring story short - After sitting in the waiting room at the dealership for an hour and a half with a BLARING TV inside the room, and BLARING MUSIC dirrectly outside the room a la Abercrombie and Fitch, they charged me $190! To fix the little thing on your tire that you pump air through!

Yeah, that thing!

It seems that because of the sensor, I had to get a whole new tire with a new sensor installed into the new little valve stem and then they had to link up the new sensor to the computer in the car -

OMFG!

The first local tire place told me (before they knew about the sensor) that it would have cost me approximately $8. So I paid a difference of $182 so that the car will inform me of something that I can see the minute I walk out to my driveway. And all of this brings me to.......... I was so disgusted today that I stopped at Pier One and got one of these:






It's way bigger than I thought it would be (that's what she said!)