How often to rotate your tires?

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Originally Posted By: zerosoma
Well there are some varied responses in this thread. My parents always told me to make sure I was getting my tires rotated and balanced on a regular basis. I just didn't know "how regular" that was.

I tallied it up and if I were to rotate the tires every 12,000 miles over the course of 60,000 miles (projected lifespan), and spent $60 each time, I'd be spending $300, which is about 2/3's of the cost of new tires anyways.

I may choose to get the alignment checked somewhere in between there or every now and again. But it seems like just getting new tires (especially with the deals on DTD or Tire Rack) a little prematurely may be the way to go. Correct me if I am wrong.

Can a person do damage to their suspension systrem by not rotating tires?

Just buy a cheap floor jack for about $20, along with the jack in your trunk you will be able to rotate frontrear yourself in about 20-30 minutes.
 
Oil change day is rotate the tyres day...10,000km

Gives you a chance to check the brake linings, put liquid alox on the turn stops etc. etc.

On the 4WD, if I went no rotation, I'd always have half worn tyres on the front, and new to half worn on the back...and I'd still count moving the backs to the fronts as a "rotation".
 
It is completely dependant on the car. My Charger wears the tires very evenly, all tires are between 7 and 8/32nds so I don't rotate. My mom's Sebring though tends to eat through front tires so they get rotated.
 
Very good point...I normally rotate mine (or at least try) every 6k miles. My 96 I've been better about rotates on than my 07. My 96 has perfectly even tire wear front and back and looks like those CS4s will give me a long life. The Altimax HPs on my 07, well they didn't fare so well after about 15,000 miles on the front, roughly half the tread wore off. So on those cars, rotates make sense to me.

Now my mom's 05 Malibu, those Altimax RTs have about 35k miles on them, with one rotate. All four are still in pretty good shape considering no rotates. So on that car, I wouldn't be as worried about following a hard and fast rule of 6k mile rotates.

I have noticed that on pretty much any truck I've seen with the Yokohama ATS tires, if they're not rotated, they wear very poorly and get noisy. So regardless of what they're on, I'd rotate those tires more strictly.
 
Originally Posted By: DBMaster
......When you move a tire to a new position on the car there will be at least several hundred miles of accelerated wear as the tire "wears in" to its new position......


I call [censored] on that one. During that wearing in process, the tire is wearing the parts that would NOT be worn, so the miles are EXTRA - as in FREE!!
 
Hello, At every oil change-plain and simple. ODD INSTANCE (because I don't want to bore anyone with a story). A pal in England saw the maintenance record of the Jeep I'm selling for my sister and he said, "My, you over-rotate your tires". The car has 5 perfectly matched tires. What can I say to that? Kira
 
Originally Posted By: RamFan
It is completely dependant on the car. My Charger wears the tires very evenly, all tires are between 7 and 8/32nds so I don't rotate. My mom's Sebring though tends to eat through front tires so they get rotated.


Exactly. Blanket recommendations are never right for everyone. The fact is most here would seem to over rotate IMO.

The LX cars (Charger,300,Magnum) are notable for the very sophisticated suspension and near ideal weight distribution. They simply don't need regular rotation in many situations.

Most FWD vehicles use the front tires so hard they will need it every weekend! (j/k!)
 
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Unless it's a known tire eater, or I'm locked on the sizes/tread, every 5k, usually at the oil change.
 
Depends on the car, on a lot of cars with staggered front and rear sizes and directional tires you can't rotate them, just replace. Most of the Germans say don't rotate, BMW comes to mind here.

OTOH my work truck with its poor weight distribution eats front tires so I have them rotated with each oil change. If I didn't the front tires would be shot and the rears would have 2/3 tread left.
 
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Since I work at a Kia dealer and can get my oil changed with my oil and filter for dirt cheap, I rotate my tires every 6000 miles, which is my OCI.
 
I've have tires on my VW that I'd rotate at 10-15k, no issue (Conti Contact Pro IIRC). Then I had a set though that feathered badly doing that (Nokian i3? IIRC it was the rears that feathered), so I try to stick with every 5k. [Can't go by the OCI, as I run 10k min for OCI's!] Also, when I don't rotate I notice very heavy front tire wear; not too surprising since it is front wheel drive. Rotating around means the tires stay reasonably similar. [Heavy wear as in accelerated wear, not funny looking wear. I have had some issues with getting good wear at the factory psi ratings though, and have to run over-inflated inorder to get flat wear on my tires. Not helped by the more narrow snow tires currently on it.]
 
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I rotate my snows every time I switch between my summer and winter combos. I used to not be able to rotate my summers (directional amd staggered setup), but now I will at least be able to switch side to side with my new Michelin Pilot Super Sports.

Mileage per rotation is usually 5-7k miles.
 
Originally Posted By: navcanman
Unless you have uneven wear I wouldn't bother rotating my tires especially if I was paying someone else to do it.


If you pay someone to rotate your tyres, you've got both too much time AND money on your hands.
 
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