I have recently had a problem with my mountaineer and need some advice/opinion. Basically, here is my problem:


At random times if feels like the gears skip causing the vehicle to jump. When this occurs I hear/feel a grinding sensation and my alignment goes out of wack and I veer left. This happens occasionally for hours at a time, oncea month, every other trip, all random.


So I took my car in for service, but it's been three weeks and no progress has been made until today. The proposed problem is this:


They told me that because I replaced my tire 4 months ago, that is what caused the problem. Let me backtrack, my car was bought new in March of 06. I have a new tire (3 months old) and three tires that are new from March. Since the one tire is new, the tread is larger, hence the circumference is larger. The variation in size causes the speed of all tires to be different. They said that the other three tires must move faster to keep up with the larger tire. This is what causes my grinding and alignment problems.


SO HERE IS THE REAL PROBLEM:


Their proposed fix is to replace ALL four tires so they are all the same size. They told me that this isn't a warranty item so it's my cost. I'm furious because how could they make the consumer pay for this glitch in the system. Every time a I have a flat tire that needs to be replaced, I have to replace all four? Come on now. It sounds like there is a problem with the engineering of the vehicle. I have never heard of any vehicle requiring the consumer to pay for all new tires every time (1) needs to be replaced.


Has anyone run across this problem? Can anyone give me any insight on this? Please help me out. Thanks.