daryll40

I have a question about tire rotation. Keep in mind that I live in Pittsburgh, where the up and down hills make tire and brake life rough. Anyway, that being said, I was out with my friend who has a 2 year old BMW X5 SUV that he bot new. It now has just shy of 30,000 miles on it and the only maintenance he has ever done is that he changed the oil once..he'll change it again at 30K. Apparently BMW has an extended oil life thing. I noticed that the front tires are about bald but the rears are much much better.

Anyway, I am not suggesting that we don't change oil on our Lexi for 15, 000 miles. But, I am wondering about tire rotation. Somewhere I read something interesting. The guy stated that he NEVER rotates tires. What he does is let the two front tires wear out first. He then buys 1 tire to match the spare and installs those two on the front, using one of the worn tires as a spare. Bottom line is that he gets almost 50,000 miles only buying one tire. This makes sense to me. I rotated tires at 5000 mile intervals for years and, in the end, don't seem to get much extension of tire life because of it.

I am just wondering if rotating tires isn't, perhaps, overmaintenance, especially in Pittsburgh, where tires get beaten no matter WHAT you do.

Daryll40




Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Toysrme

Rotate every 6,000 miles, or oil change or two. (depending on your schedule)

The reason his front tires are bald is because he's never rotated them. That's basic mantianace, no excuse for not doing it. Many places will rotate them for free, or at worst $10 or less...

Your friend has done nothing to prolong the life of his tires, or save himself money...
The only thing he's done is created a dangerous sintuation.

FYI most rear tires do last a long time. Assumeing you're not doing burnouts in a RWD car, then the tirees are noing but trailer tires. They only hold up the "relatively" light rear end. Therefore they rarely encounter anything that causes them wear.

Moral of the story is don't do that... By rotating them for cheap or free you've kept the traction in dry/wet/snow much higher over the life of the tires.

<VENOM>

I rotate every 2000 miles and maybe the tires last longer maybe they don't, I sure as hell know the OEM tires are not worth anything, usually 20-25k for me. On my Pathfinder I had Yokohama Geolandar AT+II tires with 15k and after rotating every 2k they had no wear except for my tire spinning I'll be buying them again.

Now you never said what X5 he has but I think their all AWD, but front wheels take the most abuse especially in 4WD or AWD vehicles, their is just so much force on the front wheels.

My fathers XGirlfriend bought tires and never rotated, after like 20k the fronts where bald and the rears looked brand new

Im surprised BMW did not rotate them unless he has a 4.4/4.6 with different size front and rear, 3.0 has same size all around I think, and the 15k interval oil changes is on synthetic so no worries, not gonna harm anything.

Brandon@TR

You should read the information in the link below. Your friend with the X5 probably has the sport package and that's why the tires weren't rotated. If it wasn't the sport package then they should have been rotated. The idea of using the full size spare is not a bad one, but what you should do is work the spare INTO the rotation so that you are using all 5 tires. What is he going to do when he wears them again and he has nothing but probably 5 worn tires for the vehicle? In addition he will have probably scalloped the tires and had more road noise as a result.

Rotation

PERRYinLA

Great mod job you're doing, Brandon!

Of course, most of us can't work the spare into the rotation since the wheel the spare is mounted on usually does not match the other 4 wheels. In my case I'm glad about that, since the spare is tucked under the trunk mat and is a major hassle to access.

My past two sets of tires were unidirectional, so I am only able to move them front to back. I would agree that you should rotate if you notice uneven wear from tire to tire, but in my case the uneven wear I am experiencing is the inner edges wearing sooner than the outer edges (negative camber). Rotating won't help this condition, so I only rotate if the wheels are off the car anyway for another reason.

I would agree with Daryll40- in our cases, rotating tires often is overmaintenance.

daryll40

Perry, thanks for your .02. I posted this on a few different forums and you are the only one to agree with me so far. Of course, I avoided tech stocks in 1999 and sold my bond funds in June when everyone said not to! (That's how I was able to buy my new '03 LS430!!) So being a voice in the wilderness has served me well before!