Tire Rotation: YES You NEED to: HOW & WHY

It may sound trivial…but YES, you DO need to rotate your tires…regularly!

Rotating tires is moving tires to different positions around your car. There are four to choose from as you may have noticed and this is the dental floss of driving: a really good idea all too seldom practiced. Let’s learn how and why. The reason you move tires around the car is because tires don’t wear evenly. They wear unevenly based on where they sit on the car for several reasons. The outside edges get more cornering wear front tires get scrubbed on the pavement

When they steer the front of most cars is usually heavier than the rear. The driven tires, whether it’s front or rear wheel drive get a twisting force that non-driven tires don’t. And we tend to make more right turns than left…so if you rotate your tires around they all take an even share of those various burdens i just listed and as a result they’ll last typically several thousand miles longer. But you don’t just move them around willy-nilly. The best thing to do is consult your owner’s manual. It should say where the manufacturer thinks you should rotate tires each time that you do so. Absent that…the Tire Industry Association…which is the trade group for tire makers and a really good training source…has these general recommendations if your car’s front wheel drive…the front tires are rotated straight back to the rear and the rear tires are crossed as they move to the front. On a rear-wheel drive car, the front tires cross on their way to the back while the rear tires go straight to the front.

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