Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Rotate Your Tires?

Never rotate them. If properly balanced and aligned from the start, with air maintained, they don't need it. Necessary tire rotation to keep even wear is an indicator that something is out of kilter in your system. Better to fix the system than rotate the tires.

AND for those saying to keep the best-treaded tires on the front of a vehicle, it has been proven numerous times on track tests with wet, dry, ice, and snow that the best traction should always be on the rear tires for both front- and rear-wheel drive vehicles.

Do you guys not keep maintenance records with date/mileage?

Never rotate them. If properly balanced and aligned from the start, with air maintained, they don't need it. Necessary tire rotation to keep even wear is an indicator that something is out of kilter in your system. Better to fix the system than rotate the tires.

AND for those saying to keep the best-treaded tires on the front of a vehicle, it has been proven numerous times on track tests with wet, dry, ice, and snow that the best traction should always be on the rear tires for both front- and rear-wheel drive vehicles.

Man, that would be awesome. The concrete ain't as soft as it used to be.

10K for me

now the tire store tells me I should have the best tread on the back, not the front for front wheel drive.

I disagree regardlesss of what the experts say.

Haven’t read trough this whole thread so I do t know if some mentioned this already but the Germans don’t do it at all. They think it’s non-sense and they have some of the strictest automotive safety inspection laws.

Having said that, I think it does have its benefits. . .

Technically not true. In Germany you are required by law to install snow tires on your car during the winter months. Whether the tires get rotated or not is probably an individual issue. I know my father in law keeps track and rotates.

Have you never seen a poorly maintained vehicle with tons of gray brake dust imbedded in the front wheels? I can virtually guarantee you will find front tires ground down to the nubbin' on such a car/ truck. That is someone who never rotates their tires, and I doubt they can claim great distances from a set of tires.

I'm trying to figure out a way to serialize individual tires. I like to measure the tread depth and know which tire has repairs done to it. It is amazing how slow tires wear in the last 1/4 of their life. My measurement system has a bad RR. I would like to improve the process by knowing which tire I'm measuring and the location on the tire. If the data improved I could adjust the rotation lengths to improves tire wear balance.

I want the good tires on the front, not because of front wheel drive, but because, if there's a blowout, I do Not want to lose the ability to steer off the road safely. A rear blowout doesn't amount to much, but up front, it's a serious safety thing.
We (wife and I) get out tires rotated every oil change (5000 miles).

Granting that tires rarely blow out these days, I still lean towards safety if possible. Why chance it?

Re read my post. I said I do think it has benefits. And having to put snow tires on is not the same thing as what we’re discussing. I lived in Germany for three years.

Thank you for helping me clarify. I was responding to this portion of your post: "...the Germans don’t do it at all." This strict statement of yours is what I was referring to. And, as I posted, "Whether the tires get rotated or not is probably an individual issue." No strict statement bringing a whole nation into alignment with your singular experience.

I see your 3 years in Germany and raise you 2 more. I have a German spouse, German in-laws, German children, even a German registered GSD.

Shall I post the TUV requirements auf Deutsch? Would that help the veracity of what I wrote?

10K is fine for most car tires. If you have a 4X4 vehicle with more aggressive AT or mud tires much more often. The more aggressive the tread the more often you need to rotate. I rotate the tires on my 4X4 trucks every oil change.



Completely false.

The front tires do the steering and on an unloaded vehicle support much more weight than the rear. They will not only wear sooner, but the outside edges will wear due to cornering, having them always turn in the same direction also causes wear patterns to develop.. On trucks that regularly haul stuff the rear tires will have more weight on them. Not only that but a proper rotation also alternates the direction the tires turn. None of that has anything to do with proper alignment or balance.

On a front wheel drive car there is an argument to be made to never rotate and just let the front tires wear out faster and replace them when they wear out. You'll get much longer wear on the 2 on the rear since they are never on the front. I can see that argument on trucks with dual rear wheels too.

Do you guys not keep maintenance records with date/mileage?

I do - I use the "trip-2" area on the odometer to record miles since oil change.. Same thing for the bikes..

That's a really good idea - I've never used trip 2 for anything before.

I'm a spreadsheet nerd so everything goes in there. I even keep note of which tyres have puncture repairs - get some odd statistics that some tyres are unluckier than others.

With never-rotation on minivans, half-ton pickups, and 1-ton farm trucks, I've never gotten less than 50k from any tire, and usually get toward 70k.

I'm not sure what kind of driving you guys do to wear your tires down unevenly, but like I said, your system is out-of-alignment.

In the case of front tires having varying wear patterns from turning or loading, that would naturally balance out over time across the face of the tire UNLESS something is out of kilter in your system. Turning left under load would wear one side, turning right would wear the other side, etc.

I never move tires from front to rear. Two tires get replaced at a time when they are worn down to where they have less tread than I would desire for traction purposes.