Rotating tires

[Wayne R]

I have come to the conclusion rotating the tires on our Alpines is not practical.

I just pulled my front wheels hoping to rotate them to the rear. While the backed on brake dust and road grime on the inside of the rims is very hard to remove. I doubt I could ever get them to shine as the outsides do now. I spent a couple of hours on each wheel and they still have unacceptable levels of baked on road grime.

Add to the fact that our inside duals are steel. The only option would be to rotate the fronts side to side.

I suppose if I had started rotating every 6 months the cleaning job might have been acceptable. What do the rest of you ALPINE owners do?

I am considering rotating them side to side and keeping a close eye on them.

[OldForester]

Wayne,

I decided not to rotate my Bridgestones. I rotated the factory Toyos at Les Schwab in Yakima and it was a big deal because we have SmartTire, and that required remounting and changing the SmartTire positions.

So far I haven't noticed abnormal wear on the Bridgestones, with about 15,000 miles on them. I'll just let them age out and forget the rotation because they will only have about 60,000 miles on them at 5 years and they're good for 150,000 miles plus.

[Wayne R]

Oldforester, Can the Smartire sending units only be activated in one rotational direction?

[OldForester]

Wayne -- don't know whether they work in one direction only, but I don't think so. I think they work either way.

[Tom-NC]

Hi,

I was told by a tire dealer that you really shouldn't rotate tires as the rear duals unless matched will cause problems. The reason being that the inside dual will have worn more than the outside dual plus if you swap a dual with a front tire than one dual may be not touching the road at all.

The reason is for the crown in the road. If you have to rotate anything you can rotate from LF to RF and vice a versa, however than doesn't make any sense to me.

He further told me the front tires would wear quicker than the rears anyhow so when they wear down just replace them and then when the rears wear down replace them but do it in pairs.

Hope this helps.

[TerryM]

My 2-bits:

On my 2006, Les Schwab Yakima rotated my fronts to the left rear...kept the rotational direction the same, I believe. I recently did the same with my 2009.

Regarding my Smartires, I have moved the two front tires to opposite sides to track down a noise and the sensors worked fine both ways. Also, there really wasn't all that much care in removing the tires from the wheels. The sensors are tightly wrapped around the centers of the wheels. I just let them know they were there before they started the process.

[safari1]

I agree Wayne R. I am going to rotate fronts tires with wheels side to side. Same on back, from one side to the other. I figure by reversing the rotation will be good enough. Its not worth the time and expense to have all of the tires removed from rims and rotated as a car would be.

[Tom and Patty]

You won't get much by swapping the fronts from side to side. A tire needs to be installed in a drive position, reversed, to true out irregular wear. Free rolling front won't help much.

IIWM I would leave them be if there is no irregular wear. If you have irregular wear and have lots of life left (years) dismount them and reverse the direction, installing on the right rear. Just be sure that the tread is within IIRC 4 /32 side to side.

[Wayne R]

Tom and Patty, Good explanation. I never thought about a drive position versus a free Wheeling position like the front tires.

[LVJ58]

In the 16 years we've had a coach, never rotated tires, and never had any irregular tread wear.

[frankdamp]

Rotating your tires religiously has one major drawback - they're all worn out at the same time! So you have to replace all of them.

If you leave them in one place, they wear out progressively and you can replace the fronts or the rears as needed.

Getting the maximum mileage out of each tire probably would save less than the cost of having them rotated.

[Tom and Patty]

Works with a car too. Tires should be crossed from the free rolling axle to the drive wheels.
Front drive car, rr to lf, lr to rf, and the front tires straight back. Same with rear drive, rf to lr , lf to rr, and rear straight ahead.
Happy rotating!!!!

[Jim A]

Unless you have directional tires like I had on a T-bird.

[Ray,IN]

FWIW, I took my Chevy dually to have the tires rotated because of front tire wear. They shop rotated the LF to R outside rear, and RF to L outside rear. Next time they rotated inside RR to LF, and inside LR to RF, then moved the outside rears to inside rear. This was because all 4WD cause odd front tire wear if not rotated. They said for RWD only rotation was not required unless odd tire wear was observed, such as misalignment, out of balance wear, etc.
The road crown thing for rears they mentioned too. The Michelin website says the rears must be within 1/4" dia of each other for proper weight distribution.