What are advantages of rotation ?

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There are several advantages of regular tire rotation:
Longer tread life for all 4 tires.
Sales/rebates are usually with purchase of 4 tires.

AT/DT/DTD are having rebates for purchasing 4 tires up to $100 for best, $75 for better ... Also, some manufactures have rebates for purchasing 4 tires too, so the saving can be more than $100.

If you don't rotate you may end up needing 2 tires at any one time, and you miss out all the sales/rebates.

Just installed 4 Kumho Solus TA71 for Volvo today, total was $390 before rebates. If I can get Kumho rebate of $60 the net cost will be around $200, a saving of $190.

Kumho has $60 rebate for TA71 but only with "authorized dealers". Kumho does not honor purchase from Walmart, eBay, Walmart.com, Amazon and other unauthorized dealers. AT/DT/DTD don't have Kumho rebate form, Tirerack has rebate form.
 
depends upon tire wear. On modern well aligned cars.....I just don't see the point. I rotate every 30k...are you stuck in the 70's?
 
Don't rotate on FWD & RWD vehicles all you want, but I just remind people how important it is to rotate tires on most AWD vehicles.

I rotate tires every 5,000 miles typically on my AWD Taurus & I did the same with my old AWD Fusion. The front & rear tires have to be within 2/32" tread of each other or the AWD system senses a slip, sends power to all 4 wheels all the time & you burn up the transfer case. Also have to replace all 4 tires at once. This is the case with most AWD vehicles so don't neglect rotations if you have one.
 
Don't do it on the jeep, too lazy. Can't do the cars one is staggered directional other one has 3 different tire sizes
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Originally Posted By: Branson304
Don't rotate on FWD & RWD vehicles all you want, but I just remind people how important it is to rotate tires on most AWD vehicles.

I rotate tires every 5,000 miles typically on my AWD Taurus & I did the same with my old AWD Fusion. The front & rear tires have to be within 2/32" tread of each other or the AWD system senses a slip, sends power to all 4 wheels all the time & you burn up the transfer case. Also have to replace all 4 tires at once. This is the case with most AWD vehicles so don't neglect rotations if you have one.


Isn't that what AWD drive is? (power to all 4 wheels all the time, 50/50, like subies have)
 
Originally Posted By: BobFout
Originally Posted By: Branson304
Don't rotate on FWD & RWD vehicles all you want, but I just remind people how important it is to rotate tires on most AWD vehicles.

I rotate tires every 5,000 miles typically on my AWD Taurus & I did the same with my old AWD Fusion. The front & rear tires have to be within 2/32" tread of each other or the AWD system senses a slip, sends power to all 4 wheels all the time & you burn up the transfer case. Also have to replace all 4 tires at once. This is the case with most AWD vehicles so don't neglect rotations if you have one.


Isn't that what AWD drive is? (power to all 4 wheels all the time, 50/50, like subies have)


I could be wrong, but he may be referring to slip-n-grip awd systems, where 2 tires are doing the driving 95% of the time. If neglected for a long time, when the awd does engage the tire treads could be off.

With true full time awd, you would still need to periodically rotate the tires by adding the full size spare into the rotation.

tire_rotation_fg.jpg
 
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As typical this is not a "one size fits all" service. We usually only rotate our service van tires once, they're really evenly loaded thus wearing very evenly.

Our pickups have the usual front weight bias, thus requiring occasional rotation, typically every 20k miles or so.

My sig car does not need rotation unless you have a heavy foot as it has nearly 50-50 weight distribution and excellent suspension control.
 
I don't rotate the tires on my wife's BMW. It's AWD and I replace the rear tires every 20-25k and fronts with the second set of rears.
 
Over the years I've figured out that my vehicles that are mostly driven city miles need rotations more often than my wife's car which is driven mostly highway. When they get 2 or 3/32 difference its time.
 
This is how I look at it.

Front tires roll onto and grind down their "shoulders" when turning. You can see that wear pattern on lots of cars.

I rotate at each oil change and check tire pressure and all my family members' tires wear straight, flat across and true.

All this talk about not rotating tires or that it's something from the '70's blows my mind truly.

Cherry on the Sundae Dept: Sis' '99 Cherokee came with a full size spare mounted on a 5th alloy wheel so 5 tire rotations weren't an embarrassment. Those tires wore down such that she didn't have to deal with buying a new set of tires when the time to sell the car approached.
It was a sublime luxury; as in, "It's time to buy a new car while the Jeep's tires still have tread".

A friend from England used to warn me of the "dangers of over-rotation". WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT ? ? ?
 
I think it's the other way around.
On our Subies, wear is pretty even front and back without rotation.
On any FWD, the fronts wear at about twice the rate of the rears, so if you don't rotate, the fronts will be gone while the rears still have ample tread.
There are also certain RWD apps where regular rotation is a good plan. Older Ford trucks feature a goofy IFS design that will cause the fronts to wear far faster than the rears, for example.
 
For most vehicles the only disadvantage of rotation is extra work. Since making online appointment with AT is easy and usually rotation can be done in less than 15-30 minutes, it doesn't make sense for not doing it every 6-7k miles. Specially with front wheel drive vehicles, front tires are wearing at much faster rate than rear. If you have to pay $10/20 for rotation then it doesn't make sense to do it so frequent.

This fast service with AT is 1 of the reasons I don't buy tires from Costco and Walmart.
 
I probably wouldn't rotate them if I didn't have to. The tires I get from Discount Tire always have some kind of mileage warranty on them, which I NEVER make on any of our cars. If I didn't have them rotate the tires, then they wouldn't "help" me on some money off the next set.

Plus, with buying/installing at Discount, they give free rotations anyway, so I call and make an appointment when it's time. I do it about every 5,000 to 8,000 miles on our cars and they've never complained when the tread was gone.
 
Originally Posted By: Kestas
I hate it when you get a flat and the tire is unrepairable. It throws off the whole rotation regimen.

If you have full size spare and do 5 tires rotation, then you can buy a used tire as spare and do 4 tires rotation. When it is time to replace the tires you can start again with 5 new tires.
 
Originally Posted By: philipp10
depends upon tire wear. On modern well aligned cars.....I just don't see the point. I rotate every 30k...are you stuck in the 70's?


Most tires require rotation to maintain warranty.
 
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