Time To Rotate My Tires, But Which Rotation Pattern To Do?

I've been working at a national tire shop for a couple years and the way they tell us to do everything is cross to the drive axle every 6,000 miles. For 4WD/AWD vehicles this is considered the rear axle. Front to back for directional tires. On DRW trucks the inside rear goes outside, the outsides go front, and the fronts cross to the rear inside (assuming both rear wheels are capable of both positions).

 

front to back / back to front

 

OK, I did something really crazy. I looked at tire manufactures' websites. Michelin and Goodrich both say to cross to the drive axle.

http://www.michelinman.com/tires-101/tire-care/tire-maintenance/tire-rotation.page

So, I will do that (I rotate my own tires). It makes sense that crossing gives longest life, and that is what the tire makers recommend.

 

Just in case it matters for your particular situation (DIYers take note), cross rotating requires all four wheels to be off the ground at the same time, easy if you have an expensive garage lift but not so much if you rely on four jacks in a bumpy/sloped driveway. Front to back/back to front rotations only require one side of the truck to be in the air (two wheels up) at any one time...that's a fair amount easier to do. And if you don't drive much or have lots of money for new tires it probably won't much matter how (or even if) you do rotations. Like life it's all relative, lol.

 

Seems no right way. I saw a picture in a tire shop years ago that showed fwd, the fronts cross to the rear, the rears go straight to the fronts. Rwd the rears cross to the front, the fronts go straight back.

For me it doesn't matter, I wear them out before I can rotate.

 

This ain't rocket science. Just doing front to back and back to front with most tires is just being lazy. You might get by with a street tire, but if you're using all terrain or mud tires you really need to cross them. And the more aggressive the tread the more often you need to rotate.

 

The engineers at Toyota (who are much smarter than many here, although many will disagree) say front to back - back to front - no crisscross ... do as they say and you can't go wrong. The old days of bias ply have been gone for 45 years.

 

Holy thread revival Batman! 8 years, 2 months, 23 days, 9 hours and 54 minutes!

Happy Friday!

 

The people who make the tires would disagree.

 

Have to include some kind of criss-cross, you don't want the tires to spend their entire life on one side of the vehicle

 

5 tire rotation I’ve been using, treads are evenly wearing.

 

They say no diagonal because it can induce temporary noise and handling complaints.

Run your hands along the edge of any tire, there's feathering, always.

Reversing the tread by swapping left to right burns off this wear and slow it down. Making the tire quieter over its life.

I don't cross rotate fronts because of potential complaints, but I try to always cross the rears.

It promotes wear, 100% All tacos should cross rears at least.

 

this is what I do every oil change. Back to front, cross fronts to back.

 

I do exactly the same, and I ignore any noise suggesting any other method. I *could* incorporate the spare but it's not worth the trouble for me. Back to front and cross fronts to back evens the wear on all four, which makes sense to me. Simple front to back with no crossing will typically cause the passenger side tires to wear more quickly than the drivers side.

 

The manual says no criss-cross. Ok, I get it. I'll admit I'm used to doing a criss-cross pattern on the 2WD/RWD/FWD cars I've had. Other than the 10 miles a month (if that) that the manual says I should be driving in 4WD, I'm in RWD mode. Silly question, how do you get the tire inflation pressures on the instrument panel to display correctly if you decide to criss-cross rotate?

 

I just buy new tires every oil change. DONE.

 

…fify

 

Mine get rotated when I switch from winter to summer and again from summer to winter have no ideal what went where see zero difference in the tire ware.