Do you rotate your tires as explained in the manual, back to front and cross front to rear.

I used to just move front to rear and rear to front.

 

Front to rear only for me.

 

I only rotate my tires front to back, and back to front. I do it every 10K miles. They are wearing nice and evenly.

On my 85 F150, its a whole different story though with that twin I beam suspension I gotta rotate every 5K (front to back, and left to right) AND get the tires flipped on the rims cuz the outside tread on the front tires wear about 10x's faster than the inside

 

What the manual says is just extra precautionary for some little thing that probably won't happen. Kinda like those warning you see on toys nowadays.

 

Being a little **** retentive, I rotate, wash, even the back side of the rims and tires every 3,000 miles along with the oil and filter change using Castrol Syntec. I place the rear wheels directly to the front and place the fronts diagonally to the rear.
Bart

 

If you are **** retentive, then what am i considered?

every spring i put the truck up on jackstands and spend 20+hours washing and polishing the entire exterior and bed, washing under teh hood, the complete interior, the entire underside of the truck (all by hand!), then i take down the spare and clean and polish that on both sides, change the oil, rotate the tires, polish the backs of the rims (i do that everytime i polish the truck, but do it extra good with them off the truck), clean down all the suspension parts, and there's probably stuff i am forgetting
THen every month during show season, i wash the engine, and polish the truck and wash it. Every 2 weeks i do the interior (leather and vinyl and windows) and vacuum before every show (so every weekend just about). LoL

I don't own my truck....my truck owns me

 

Do you re-balance when you rotate? I rotate every oil change, 5k miles with mobil 1. I do the back to front and crossover so they end up all around the truck. Wax the back side of the rims at this time and dab a little anti-sieze on the lug nuts for ease. 22k and perfect wear.

By the way, spend the money for a Hunter 9700 load force balance just once then rotate frequently. You will not have any problems.

 

Just front to rear every 5-7k for me. I don't bother crossing over.

 

nope. never had them rebalanced since i bought the truck.

is that the machine that can put the tires on without touching the rim lip and screwing it up? Just curious. the name sounds familiar. I want to make sure the place i get new tires at has the right equipment, even though i still have another 20K to get out of these tires

I don't really see the purpose of crossing the tires over when you rotate them. The same side of the tread is still facing the outter side of the truck. Only changing the rotational direction. mine are wearing evenly anyway, so it doesn't really matter though. lol

 

From what I understand, rotating through all wheel bays is to make the tires wear more evenly. The most comon cause of uneven wear would probably be misalignment in the front end. When the tires aren't pointing directly in foward, or are not perfectly verticle the tire will not wear evenly (more so in the second case). By rotating your tires through each wheel position - diagonally back and straight foward - , you can minimze the wear on one tire (or two tires) because you have spread this uneven wear among all the tires.

If your tires are wearing evenly, you don't really need to follow this procedure. Although you may never realize the benifit until it is too late.

Everyone should rotate at least from back to front every 5-10k miles, as much as we burn out. Otherwise, we will end up with bald tires in back and full tread in the front (or vice versa).

 

You don't have 4 wheel align on these trucks so front to back is sufficient. If you get the fronts to the back every 5k or so you will be okay. You need to be checking your alignment (by checking tire wear and/or tracking) all the time anyway.