Tyre rotation (between front & rear axles)

[ndevans]

Anyone got any thoughts on rotating tyres between front & rear, and from o/s to n/s? I know usual advice is swap front straight to rear, then put rear o/s on front n/s & v.v. as below:-

tyres.gif (3.73 KiB) Viewed 4698 times

What sort of mileage and/or time intervals should this be done at?

[mike1864]

I've never bothered, but maybe every 10,000 miles?
Which, for my two Minors, works out at every ten or twenty five years respectively.
And even then, they'd have most of their tread left! But the sidewalls would be getting time expired anyway, especially the ones that are parked in sunshine!

[geoberni]

As a general principle or specifically Minors?

Depends on the car and the wheels/tyres you have fitted.
I wouldn't bother rotating at all, unless you are desperate to have the cost of replacement for them all at once.
For the past 50 years I've always left them as is, whatever the car, so I only change an axle at as time; thus spreading the cost.

That's especially relevant with a Diesel as the front are so heavy; heaven knows how often an electric needs tyres with the weight they carry.

Unless a Minor is a daily drive, it's usually going to have old, hard, and brittle tyres, long before it has worn tyres.
I changed the tyres on mine 2 years ago, they had plenty of tread and no side wall cracks, but the rubber was really hard.
They were so old they only had a single digit year code so at least 20+ years old, perhaps 30+ years...
The ride and feel really improved with new rubber.

[mike1864]

And some regimes suggest involving the Spare in the process.
I suppose that has the advantage that the Spare (if new) delivers some miles before it time expires, perhaps unused.
Plus it forces you to check the spare is good!
But I'm with Geoberni on this; ie leave in place, and replace when worn (though not for cost spreading reasons; on my modern car, I can't see the net difference between spending £250 every two years versus £500 every four. The real trick is to have them all down to 2-3mm when you dispose of the car!)

[Biggles1957]

Generally not an issue on Minors but of course you can't do this if you have directional tyres fitted on moderns!

[svenedin]

Generally not an issue on Minors but of course you can't do this if you have directional tyres fitted on moderns!

Very true. I used to rotate front to back (but not side to side as they are directional) on my Audi S3 which is Quattro but variable power to the 4 wheels and mostly FWD biased (so it wear the front tyres faster). Then I read that it was foolish to have the more worn tyres on the back so I gave up (they are very big heavy tyres and wheels) and just replaced the front axle set before the rears. Quite some time ago my Audi spent the Winter with Winter tyres (for Germany) so between the two sets of tyres, Summer and Winter it took quite a long time before I needed tyres. Now I just use the CrossClimate tyres and they are good enough for what I need.

Stephen

[TravellerROG]

The 1970 owners handbook recommends only swapping the wheels if you're using cross-ply tyres, citing the need to keep radial s in the original position to maintain their balance.

As an apprentice a long time ago, I recall being taught to swap radials front to rear but only on the same side of the car, so swap NSR with NSF etc. although that would preclude putting the spare into the mix.

[ndevans]

I don't understand why radials would need to be kept in their original position "to keep their balance"?

Surely if they are balanced off the car then it doesn't matter which position they go in?

[TravellerROG]

I don't understand why radials would need to be kept in their original position "to keep their balance"?

Surely if they are balanced off the car then it doesn't matter which position they go in?

When I started in the trade, we used an on the car balancer because, despite being a Ford Main Dealer, we didn't fit tyres as there was an ATS opposite and we just sent everything there. Off the car balancers seemed to be pretty much the preserve of tyre centres at the time.