Tire Rotation - Never paying for a rotation again.

[Ramblin Fever]

I wouldn't be going through a wet/snowy season period with any bald or low tread tires, whether they were on front or back....just not worth the safety risk. I'd rather put new tires on; I've seen far too many accidents with owners trying to get that last little life of 2 tires whether they were on front or rear.

Have this scenerio to encounter at the end of this summer, as I have 2 newer tires on the rear axle of the Rodeo, same tread as the front tires, only Discount could not get them to balance out, so they replaced 2 of them 15k miles after a set of 4 were installed. All 4 tires had very decent tread all last winter, but the 2 fronts are wearing down pretty fast.

I'm not one for just replacing 2 tires out of 4, so they will all 4 get replaced, and I'll use the 2 good tires that still have quite a bit of tread as new spares for 2 different trucks.

I do rotate my tires, comes with the tire package from Discount...I find that some tires/tread are very easily knocked out of balance, and need rebalancing.

Some vehicles do not drive/shift, etc correctly with unequal tread depths, and in regards to Isuzu's, most trucks will not shift into 4-wheel drive if the tires are the least bit different in their wear pattern depth.

 

[y_p_w]

I've got a 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX. Subaru generally recommends that tires shouldn't be off more than 1/4" in total circumference to prevent damage. Personally I think the real deal is with the automatic versions of the AWD mechanism with the electronic controls. They've got some sort of mechanically actuated clutch, and my understanding is that they can go batty causing premature clutch wear if they're constantly engaging on dry pavement. My car comes with a compact spare and no FWD fuse, so I don't think that Subaru thinks matching tire sizes is that critical as long as the speeds are kept down (under 50 MPH).

Of course some cars come with different sized tires. Rotation is not an option.

I've always been under the impression that most FWD cars do best in bad weather with more tread in the rear given that most FWD cars have between 35-45% of their weight on the rear axle. I've heard of cases where the rears were almost bald, and they'd hydroplane and cause the driver to lose control even though there was plenty of tread on the fronts.

I experimented with the last tires on my '95 Acura Integra GS-R. I got a set of new tires and intended to wear them until the fronts were at the wear bars. I then intended to have the rears moved to the front and new tires installed on the rear. I managed to do this once after maybe 25K miles. The rears had maybe 80% of their tread left when I moved them to the front. Then my car was stolen, the seats, tires, and wheels were stripped (replaced with one of the compact spares and three steel wheels with bald tires), PS pump ripped out, and the car abandoned in the Berkeley Hills.

 

[oilnoob425]

I rotate my tires because my manual says I should. I do it by myself so it's free. If your manual says not to then I wouldn't bother. Mechanics say a lot of things to line their pockets. That doesn't mean we should listen.

 

[crinkles]

I've rotated once and it ended up being no good.

Little History: bought the car with original tyres at 33,000 km. Right rear (RR) tyre had a lot more tread than the LR because the previous owner must have had a flat, repaired it and left it in the boot rather than putting the repaired tyre back on.

also at that time the fronts had worn to about 2.5 - 3mm a fair bit less than the back.

So before a 5,000km trip I bought new fronts (TOYO transas TEO). 10,000 km after the trip I had a shop rotate the tyres as follows

front pair crossed over to the back
back pair straight to the front.

(edit my manual says move back pair crossed over the front , and the front pair straight to the back, but the garage convinced me that is a "bad" idea).

Sure as heck I had a massive wobble on the freeway right after that. I got rid of the unevenly worn set of original tyres now on the front axle, got a new set of Goodyears and its all good!

I do want to rotate (10,000km since last rotate is coming up) but from experience its only caused me trouble and $$$ to boot.