Tire rotation

surfscottydog

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So, how do you all rotate your tires? We all pretty much ride radial tires now, mostly gone are the bias tires. So do you go front to back, driver side to driver side? Or front to back driver side to passenger side and vice a versa?
Inquiring minds want to know 😁?
 
I take it to Discount Tire and they rotate them so that I can keep the Toyo mileage warranty (Toyo requires a shop to do it, annoyingly). I asked Discount Tire one time and I believe they just do a clockwise rotation.

Worth noting that I'm doing a 5-tire rotation as I have the spare on a matching wheel.
 
For those who have 5 matching wheels, this is what I would do and what I did before getting 37s.

7OYQ7PA.png
 
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I do fronts to backs and cross every other time.
 
For those who have 5 matching wheels, this is what I would do and what I did before getting 37s.

7OYQ7PA.png
Agreed.

There's some irony of Toyo requiring a shop do the rotations and the shop doing it sub-optimally, but protecting my warranty more than me doing it optimally. 🤦‍♂️
 
For those who have 5 matching wheels, this is what I would do and what I did before getting 37s.

7OYQ7PA.png
All this diagram shows is the driver's tire getting back to it's original spot 🤪
 
For those who have 5 matching wheels, this is what I would do and what I did before getting 37s.

7OYQ7PA.png
Yep - this is what I follow for the 5 tire rotation...
 
Ok, I'll ask. If you rotate on a regular basis, why wouldn't "C" be fine?
By the pattern title I gather the black arrows are direction from non-driven to driven axel, so the cross is from the non-driven wheels to the driven wheels. The tires directional spin is changed when moved to the driven wheel. Why this is preferred, I could only guess…
 
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I take mine to Ford, I’ll ask how they do it next time
 
Good question for Tirerack experts who came out with these recommendations. There has to be a reason why A is recommended over C for rear wheel drive vehicles.

Comparing A to C after a few rotations I see them as functionally equivalent. I'll have to look up how often Tire Rack recommends rotating. I do it at every oil change but if you only rotate say, twice, throughout the tire life then maybe it matters more...
 
From Tire Rack:

"Tires on the front and rear axles perform very different tasks, and rotating tires every 3,000-5,000 miles (or more frequently for tires with aggressive, all-terrain or off-road-focused patterns) allows each tire to spend time at each wheel position on the vehicle. “Spreading the work” of each wheel position amongst all the tires helps to keep the wear even, maintaining the vehicle's proper handling balance and helping to ensure any tire tread life warranty remains valid"


So they recommend an even higher frequency than I'm using... If for instance, you get 8 rotations out of your tires based on their recommendation, any given tire will have spent the exact same time in each position. Only the order will have been different.

LF=1, RF=2, LR=3, RR=4

The "A" pattern will send a right front tire through: 1,4,2,3,1,4,2,3
The "C" pattern will send the same tire through:
1,3,2,4,1,3,2,4

Somewhat obvious since there are 4 tires so every 4 will repeat. If you bump it to a number not divisible by 4, however... 10 rotations will give the A pattern an extra 1 and 4, C will get an extra 1 and 3. One front and one rear position on each pattern...

Ok, I'm done with my analysis and convinced myself it doesn't matter... Back to my day. ;)
 
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Ok, I'm done with my analysis and convinced myself it doesn't matter... Back to my day.

Overthinking overanalyzing separates the body from the mind(c) 😀

I just use a rearward cross with 5 tires and rotate every 3K. Easy does it.
 
Ok, I'm done with my analysis and convinced myself it doesn't matter... Back to my day. ;)
As long as every tire is in every position over the same number of tire rotations, it doesn't matter. You could swap LF<>RF and LR<>RR on the first rotation and then LF<>LR and RF<>RR on the second rotation and accomplish the same thing across four rotations. It's just easier to always do the same pattern every time.

It is a bummer my spare just sits there but damn that factory spare be fugly...
 
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