I figure it is a long shot, but could have swore I was told the tires had a warranty as well.
What does a tire warranty have to do with a valve stem?
Did you have new stems installed with the tires? If yes and a stem failed its still
not part of the tire warranty. The dealer may cover replacing the stem if its been
less than a month or two and no signs of abuse, but don't count on it.
A good tire dealer or a shop where you are a regular should take care of you, at
least that is what we did in the tire shop I worked in years ago.
I worked in a tire shop when I was just out of HS for close to 2 years and I
mounted a few tires in that short time (our average sales were over 100/week).
One week we had a close out (this is early 70s) on a popular tire line, 4 for $99
any size mounted and balanced. We sold and mounted over 400 tires that week.
Plus we sold I don't know how many more that people carried out and brought back
later for mounting because we (or they) didn't have time to get them on that week.
There were two other guys in the shop besides me to mount all those tires, we were
busy that week. One of us dismounted and mounted the tires from the vehicle; the
second changed the tires on the rims (almost all stock rims were steel back then);
and the third man balanced them.
The salesmen always tried to sell new valve stems because the company wanted to
sell new stems and make money, they were a high profit item even at $1, and the
salesmen got 10 cents for each stem they sold out of that dollar. Back then a new
stem was $1 installed (which only took a second) but still thats how they priced it out.
When mounting tires I always put new stems in. I didn't care if they paid for them
or not. I felt it was better have a new stem with that new tire and know they were
the same age and not a 5 year old stem which had been exposed to WX, salt, sun, and
abuse. Plus, for me it was much faster to rip the old stem out to deflate the old tire in
about 4 seconds as opposed to messing with taking the core out and the chance of losing
it. I can't tell you how many of those stems were ready to break in half. As soon as you
touched them and just lightly bent them to the side you could see the cracks and many
would just break loose and go flying across the shop floor. I'd be willing to bet that as
many tire blowouts are caused by bad/degraded valve stems as road hazards.
And now that I have to pay for them I still have new stems installed with every new tire,
even though they are much more than $1 now, it's still cheap insurance.
