Many car manuals suggest that you shall regularily "rotate" the tires (hope this is the right English term for that): in order to make tire wear more even, rear tires shall be regularily switched to the front, and vice versa.
In my understanding (which also corresponds with my practical experience) the reason behind this is the fact, that front tires usually wear out faster, than rear tires. This is imo due to two main factors:
1) front tires do the steering, so their edge zones wear out faster;
2) front tires take most of the car weight, hence friction, when doing braking.
So what you do when doing this tire rotation, is basically taking your less-worn-out rear tires and putting them to the front, to give them a chance of wearing more intensively to "pick up" with the ex-front tires which during same "rotation" went to the rear.
However some major car manufacturers like Michelin insist, that you shall at all times keep less worn-out tires at the back, not at the front. If I understand their agrumentation correctly, they proclaim this critical in order to avoid car spinning when driving curves on slippery road. Which also seems a legit consideration, but contradicts the whole tire rotation theory and would practically mean that you would have to live with uneven front-and-rear tires wear, not trying to compensate it at all, always keeping your front tires at the front and your rear tires at the rear.
I understand that the latter approach would also mean that you would have to buy new tires more often, which is beneficial for the car manufacturer. But which approach is the better one from the driving safety standpoint? Shall we rotate tires, or shall we keep less-worn tires at the rear at all times? Thank you!
* which is beneficial for the car manufacturer = which is beneficial for the tires manufacturer
I've heard that too but I don't practice that. When the road is wet or snowy, I adjust speed according to conditions.
https://carkiller.com/scottykilmer/postid/124367
Eh, don’t worry too much about it. Just as long as you rotate in some pattern at some interval, wear should be even (or close to even) and it won’t matter.
If for some reason you had to replace 2 tires so you have 2 old and 2 new, I’d but the 2 new in the front and rotate just side to side until you eventually replace all 4.
I would think that rotating the tires every 5000 miles would keep the wear on the tires close to being the same. I do a tire rotation every 5000 miles along with an oil change. My tires look like they're wearing about the same.
