[Closed] Car tyre rotation, should I?

What tyres are they?
Assuming the car is fwd and the tyres are a decent model I'd rotate them.

I wouldn't see why they are spinning because of the tread ( I was under the impression the tread depth was to shed water efficiently at higher speed) . I personally would swap tyres and replace all at once

Tyres are Falken something or other which I've never been that thrilled with. Car is a VW Troc, so FWD. It is defiantly keener to spin at the lower temperatures we've seen recently. Location is in Lincolnshire, so not exactly an icy wasteland.

9000 miles and down to 3.5-4mm, spinning a lot? Edit - seen it's a TRoc but how do you drive it? That's probably relevant to the rotation question. Do you check your pressures regularly?Even my large old FWD diesel estate would get over 20,000 out of a set of fronts without much trying (I typically changed fronts at around 3mm).

If the car is FWD and you're Barrying it around (i.e. driving it hard) then putting the least worn tyres out back can really upset the vehicle at the point of oversteer so that's worth bearing in mind. FWIW I have rotated tyres in the past - but you need to understand the pros and cons. More front end grip will help you braking in a straight line in the wet and give you a bit more traction. More rear end grip should reduce oversteer risk on a FWD car and it will tend to understeer first, which is easier to manage.

Personally I wouldn’t rotate as I like to stagger tyre replacement so would just replace the fronts, but since you want to move over to all season then maybe rotate to even out wear and replace all four at some point in the future.

It's the wife's car and she drives pretty slowly. The excess wear is due to having to navigate a couple of terrible junctions where you have to cross fast moving (and unforgiving) traffic sharply.

So the correct and safe answer is to put the 6mm rears on the front, and put new tyres on the back. Driving gods will disagree but its safer to have more grip at the back as anyone can handle understeer (braking or slowing down is the corrective action) whereas oversteer needs skill to correct (speed up or drive through it).

By rotating this way you avoid having 10 year old tyres on the back whilst you've gone through three sets on the front.

Or bite the bullet and go all-season all the way round, if you do fit just two, they should go on the back (see above) until the fronts need replacing.

Ideally you would rotate them earlier so they wear at the same rate but I can hold my hand up to recently ruining two tyres due to poor tracking, if I'd rotated them a month earlier (and fixed the tracking) they would have done another 18 months easily! Live and learn...

My mechanic rotates my tyres every year, front to back, side to side. Also replaces them when the sides start to crack due to the sun.

No idea if it's a bit overkill but he s a good guy and half the price of the main dealer, and the cars never had a problem.

The excess wear is due to having to navigate a couple of terrible junctions where you have to cross fast moving (and unforgiving) traffic sharply.

Spinning the wheels isn't going to get you across quicker

Put new tyres on the front, leave the back.

I do think some cars just wear through tyres more quickly. Our Galaxy seemed to wear through them quicker than the V70 now does.
It also massively depends on the tyre model - I had a full set of Uniroyal Rain something's that wore out in 8k or so on a Yaris...Replaced with some Cooper All season something's that I scrapped the car still wearing them at 25k later.

The excess wear is due to having to navigate a couple of terrible junctions where you have to cross fast moving (and unforgiving) traffic sharply

That sounds very unsafe. If your wife is routinely having to verge on wheelspin to get across a junction she should be looking for an alternative route.

If you buy new tyres they should really go on the back though if the current rears have 6mm of tread they're hardly worn so I don't think it's that important (but I definitely wouldn't move worn tyres to the rear going into the coldest wettest time of the year!). As mentioned above though, lower tread won't be causing your wheelspin unless you're driving in a flood.

re. Wheelspin- I think it's just the time of year, cooler, greasy roads just don't offer much grip.

– Fit all seasons to the front only (not sure it’s a good idea to mix tyre types)

This is the definitely the worst option. Not a good idea to mix tyre types if you can avoid it. If you do, put them on the back as outlined above

Edit.

Those tyres don’t sound too badly worn for 9,000 miles.
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I replaced my Michelin pilots at just over 20,000 miles when they were a little above the minimum tread bars. The guy at Blackcircles double-checked if I wanted to keep them as ‘they still have some wear in them’.</span>

Rotating front to rear should work and support your wish to move to ‘all season’ tyres in 1-2 years. All seasons might wear even faster than what I guess are ‘summer’ tyres.

Despite the good advice to fit the new tyres to the rear, is there going to be much difference in tread depth and contact area with those barely worn rears and new front tyres?

This blackcircles page has some blah about rotation

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<div class="bbp-reply-author d-flex align-items-center flex-wrap"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8rem;">re. Wheelspin- I think it’s just the time of year, cooler, greasy roads just don’t offer much grip.</span></div>
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I think you’re right. Used to get this with anything but careful acceleration in some MBs and VWs. Not experienced it at all on regular roads in AWD or RWD electric cars even with their ‘woah’ torque and acceleration.. But that’s a different thread

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As spooky says, rears to the front and new tyres on the rear.

Swapping side to side may even out wear but many modern tyres have a defined direction of rotation, so you'd need to refit them, not swap wheels. And some are asymmetric so should stay on the same side of the car whatever.

All seasons might wear even faster than what I guess are ‘summer’ tyres.

I had CrossClimes on my last car and they were supposed to give ~20% more mileage than summer tyres. I got rid of the car before I got to verify that claim.

I think I'd swap front to back and put 4 new CrossClimes on when the fronts have had enough. It's greasy ATM which will probably be why there's less traction. Put a block under the accelerator if Mrs jsync is a bit Carlos Fandango... 😉

(don't)

This thread is so much longer than it needs to be.

Yes. Rotate your front tyres to the rear. Because it's free and it'll take you half an hour.

If your wife starts Tokyo Drifting into the bends, which I very much doubt will happen, then replace the rears.

Tyres are designed to be consistently grippy right down to the legal limit. The grip shouldn't really drop off unless they're way past their best or just old and perished.

However, the fronts are beginning to go off quite quickly now with easy wheel spinning over the last week

Our new car with less than 1500 miles on the clock is doing exactly the same thing this week. I suspect it's more to do with the much colder temperatures this week than anything else.

As an aside I agree with Matt, our C-Max goes through front tyres at an annoying rate and that's with a tracking check every 6 months (we have rough roads round our way). My garage said they've even seen Ka's eat tyres, might be a Ford thing.

Thanks for the responses, I think I may get them all swapped as I'm not sure my OCD could cope with mixing. I think one of the main issues maybe is the grip in lower temps, my old BMW's tyres used to be notable less grippy below 8 degrees.

Tyres are designed to be consistently grippy right down to the legal limit. The grip shouldn’t really drop off unless they’re way past their best or just old and perished.

Or unless they're being used outside the optimum temperature range.

Or unless they’re being used outside the optimum temperature range.

Yes, that's exactly what I said right afterwards. Brand new car here on tyres which were awesome in the summer. The grip has dropped off a cliff in the last week or so. Lots of unintentional front wheelspin and the rear end can be a little loose.

New wheels and tyres are probably around a grand so I think I'll be sending the other half to work in the van when the weather gets worse.

Swapping side to side may even out wear but many modern tyres have a defined direction of rotation, so you’d need to refit them, not swap wheels. And some are asymmetric so should stay on the same side of the car whatever.

You've got that the wrong way around, an asymmetric tyre can be fitted anywhere on the car, ocne you get it on the wheel correctly. A directional one you're right and can't.

Directional tyres tend to have a big V shaped groove in the tyre to push water out both sides. The blocks either side of it are the same though. So once mounted on a rim you have to keep it on the same side of the car regardless.

As a result, you cannot (or at least shouldn't) ever have a directional spare wheel.

Asymmetric tyres have big outside blocks to provide cornering grip, and smaller blocks on the inside edge for wet braking. The grooves tend to be a diagonal. If you look at the uniroyal below, mounted one way the grooves pump water to the outside of the tyre, mounted the other way they pump the water to the large circumferential grooves, it doesn't actually matter which way you move the water as long as you move it. But the tyre has to be mounted with the big blocks on the outside of the wheel. So any wheel can be fitted to any corner of the car as long as the tyre is fitted on the wheel correctly.

Directional and asymmetric tread on a tyre is rare, one-off designs for high performance cars.

To those claiming you can put the worn tyres on the back as you are not driving at the limit of the tyres grip...

Two plausible scenarios

1) Icy/snowy motorway, and you have to make an evasive lane change for what ever reason. Your 3mm rear tyres have worn through the extra siping (even more so with all-seasons, hence 4mm min tread depth during the winter versus 1.6mm in the UK) so the back steps out and hinders the stability controls efforts to pull you back into line. You stuff the car into the central crash barrier.

2) Rainy dark morning, you round a corner and encounter a puddle across the road. Reduced tread depth results in the rear of of the car aquaplaning before the front, no matter how many bells and whistles the car has, it can't save you when the rear tyres are water ski-ing. Thats a sudden wake up on your 7am commute.

Put 4 all season tyres on and keep the two newer tyres you have taken off. In April get them refited to the front, taking them off again next november and rotate the all season tyres. You will get another 4 summers out of the summer tyres and the 4 all seasons will last longer too.

Rotate, as the backs will age before worn.

This is a perennial STW argument but, it's not so simple as "more grip on back is always best". Yes it's better to slide the front than the back; but that's not the only choice- it's better still to not slide at all, and the all seasons front/normal on the rear, on a fwd front engine car, is often less likely to slide than the other way round.

So you're essentially trading severity for likelihood- each individual front end slide is better than a rear-only slide, but 10 front end slides could be worse than 1 rear end slide. Or, perhaps, 2 or 3 front end slides is worse than 0 rear slides, if you never exceeded the rear grip at all in that time.

Or to put it a different way, as well as the scenarios spooky mentioned, there is a third- you encounter a hazard but having adequate grip on both ends means nothing bad happens at all. And as the front requires and uses more grip than the rear, the "more grip front" setup increases the odds of staying in that space. There are situations where only the grippier tyre will provide adequate for the front but the less grippy tyre will provide less grip but still adequate for the rear, and whether it's more or less doesn't matter as it's enough.

Basically it's never as simple as people maintain, on either front. Hardware and driver just make too much of a difference for one size to really fit all, so "grip on the rear" is good advice but it's not a perfect rule. Having said that, in this particular case the OP seems to be a bit of a tyre spinner and so probably should play it safer?

(I speak only from my own experience; I did 4 winters in a ford focus estate, winters on the front, sensible allrounders on the back. The front did all of the power delivery, most of the direction changing and most of the braking, and in short, the rear didn't need as much grip to go where it had to. I did try it the other way round as recommended and it was pretty open and shut. Different cars may act differently based on brakes, weight distribution etc, and different drivers too)

I’d just put 2 new ones on front and be done with it. Can we have a vote? 😀

Can we have a vote? 😀

Is that on or off the treadmill?

I like bsims solution.

Edit: my earlier comment about 4mm minimum tread depth for legal winter tyres in winter months was referring to a lot of European countries. As this is the point the sipes are worn away and performance drops.

Car is a VW Troc

1.5 petrol engine? This isn't so much the tyres but more related to the car and power delivery.
Troc's have an issue with "kangarooing" and there is a software update available - which you have to ask for as it's not a recall.
Ours is much calmer pulling away since it's been done and what felt like a misfire when cold has also disappeared.
Check out the VW Troc forum as there are now 252 pages on this subject.

Delete

I know all the advice is to put the better tyres in the rear, but Northwind speaks sense.

For example, I'm about to swap over to winter wheels on the wife's car this weekend. I've a pair of Ultragrip 9, no visible wear and a pair of Ultragrip 8 that are about 4mm on the inner shoulder and a good bit more on the outer shoulder.

The car is a ten year old Zafira diesel that is typically used for carting the dogs and/or the bikes so it never going to be driven in a spirited manner.

While the rears Ultragrip 8s really don't have much life left in them, there are still a softer compound and still have all sipes visible and therefore, still seem more appropriate than the current summer tyres.

The inner shoulders are worn as those were on the rear axle last year and there is zero adjustment there to solve the issue.

Yes, the back end stepping out on her would be harder to correct than if the front did, but I don't see her doing anything to cause that. However, I can imagine that if the tyres get challenged, it will likely be as a result of someone else doing something daft, in which case, it's the braking traction we're really going to want. If she does get into some mud or snow which out with the dogs, again, that extra grip seems to make sense on the driving wheels.

I might consider getting the Ultragrip 8s turned around to even out the wear but at 4mm in the worst spot, I do wonder if that window of opportunity has been missed.

@patagonian - Yep, that's the one and it's also a manual. It had the update this time last year and there was a marked improvement. I think the ability to spin is also a characteristic of this car due to the taller ride height and softer suspension?

Ours is a DSG which masks the kangarooing but causes it to feel like a misfire. They are surprisingly nippy for what they are and I think that the race for better consumption/emissions causes a few issues. I believe it's an ongoing thing so worth asking if there is another update available.

I think it’s just the time of year, cooler, greasy roads just don’t offer much grip.

Which is what I was thinking - regular tyres are a compromise as far as compounds are concerned, and for a Northern temperate climate an average tyre will perform pretty well most of the time, but colder damp weather will show the compromise, because the rubber compounds will harden, giving less grip, especially on a damp surface and even more so on short journeys when the tyres haven’t had chance to reach an optimum temperature, all this makes wheel spinning more likely trying to pull away quickly to take advantage of a gap in busy traffic.
I’d get this a lot in my old Octavia, the Traction Control light would flicker on damp cold tarmac, because I always went for budget tyres. My EcoSport has Goodyear’s on it, not sure of the model, but they’ve only got around 5400 miles on them so far, and they seem pretty grippy on the cold damp roads at the moment, but eventually I’ll be putting Michelin CrossClimate 2 on it, they seem to be one of the best available for consistent grip and handling in most conditions.
At least I’ll have time to save up for a set...

I would never rotate tyres around for fundamentals that a tyre will wear according to the suspension setup of the car (camber, toe in and caster and change in suspension due to weight in car). The minute you swop the wheels around the tyre will have to wear into the new set up. The tyres will give less grip to begin with then wear into the correct setup, this will wear the tyres out quicker.

The tyres will give less grip to begin with then wear into the correct setup, this will wear the tyres out quicker.

Sure if you leave it for ever.

Mine get rotated every 5000 or so miles due to fitting the winters. I always put the best pair on the front for the reasons Northwind puts out how ever the winters get left on once we are at 4mm to death.

Last set of tires the terrible Michelin primacy 3 that should be illigal for providing zero grip on wet roads..... Lasted 5 years/25000 miles with no adverse wear characteristics showing and still had more than 2mm on them when I binned them.

There's a big difference between economic motoring and sports performance. If it was a touring car on a track id agree with you but I don't buy rotating tires causes everything to wear out quicker.

I don’t buy rotating tires causes everything to wear out quicker.

This. I was told rotation causes more wear by a tyre place, as I like to swap them left to right on the axle when I get the car serviced/ 2 new tyres fitted to get more life from them. This balances wear due to roundabouts and full lock reverses in the same direction for me. I would then wear the front set out and move the rears to the front and fit new to the rear.

On the car in question - Yaris would get approx 5k on rear after fitment and then approx 10k on the front. When I didnt rotate them I got 8k on the front. Anecdotal I know but im sticking to my hypothesis.