How do you guys rotate tires?

[czo79]

Hello all...
I'm wondering how people rotate tires...I know subaru recomends that you go front to back, keeping them on the same side. I think I've also read about people doing the x rotation on AWD cars....where you bring the left front to the right back, and right back to the left front, basically diagonally rotate them. I guess what pattern you use might be affected by the type of tire you have. I've noticed on past AWD cars of mine, that I tend to wear the inside of the tires a lot more than the outside. I don't think it was due to incorrect alignment...I could be wrong though. Anyways, I'm wondering if maybe the diagonal pattern might help that compared to the front back rotation pattern. Thanks all!

[vrg3]

I think it just depends on the type of tire. If you have non-directional tires (that don't have a preferred direction of rotation), then I'd do the X pattern. But if your tires are directional, just do front-back.

Most directional tires have arrows on the side showing the preferred rotation direction.

[czo79]

Thanks vrg3....
I'm wondering why you don't want to do the x pattern with directional tires...I could see if they were the pirelli asymetricos or whatever that have different right and left tires...but wouldn't the tires still be going the same direction even when rotated in the x pattern? So it must be something else....it doesn't matter I suppose.
thanks
micum

[vrg3]

Depends how you do it. If you unmount the tires and then remount them, you can get them to stay the correct direction. Most people just rotate the wheels and tires together since they can do that in their driveway or parking lot themselves. If you take a wheel from one side of the car and move it to the other side of the car, it will rotate in the opposite direction.

[czo79]

true true...that kinda slipped by me.
thanks

[legacy92ej22t]

vrg3 is correct. What I did with my Fuldas, which are directional, was remount and balance everytime I rotated (it was free with the service plan so what the hell). I think the way you're supposed to rotate is not simply a x though but rather (i may have this backwards) the rears go straight forward and the fronts go diagonally to the back

[vrg3]

Oh, whoops! I didn't read Micum's post carefully the first time. The correct way to do the X-pattern rotation is as Matt describes.

[Legacy777]

you really shouldn't cross rotate radial tires.

You should only rotate front to back and vice-versa. Especially directionals......(unless you dismount & remount)

[vrg3]

Why is it bad to cross-rotate non-directional radial tires?

[93Leg-c]

Don't know if this still holds true or not but when radials first came out, I was told NOT to cross rotate them because of the way the radials were constructed. About 8-10 years after that, the tire manufacturers' representatives said it is recommended to cross rotate all radials for even wear because of improvement in radial construction.

I had asked the reps what happens if you just cross-rotate uni-directionals and have it roll in the "wrong" direction. They said it wouldn't harm the tire but optimum traction in the wet would be impeded and why have them rolling the wrong way when you paid good money to get improved traction and handling?

The above explanation was the last I knew; I don't know if the tire industry still subscribes to that or not.

What I do personally is that since I don't rotate my tires regularly according to a mileage schedule, I measure each tire with a tread depth indicator (or sometimes just eye-ball them). Then I decide which tire should be on which corner depending on the wear of each tire.