My '06 FX4 came with the Goodyear Wrangler AT/S stock....outline white letter. They'll be coming off, but I want to get some more miles out of them before I ditch them. Love my wheels, but hate the white letter tires.

After holiday travels, I've got about 1600 miles on the tires. I want to turn the white letters in, but I've heard that after a few miles tires get some integrity and shouldn't be turned.

What do you guys think? Anybody done it?

 

If you want to turn them in so the white letters dont show, you can keep the same rotation by swapping the tires LR to RR and LF to RF. Or, might as well rotate them while your at it and swap them LR to RF and LF to RR.

 

When I purchased my rig (Aug of 2004, 31,700 miles), the tires that were on it were black wall out. When I purchased my new wheels in April of 06, I had the tire shop turn the white letters out (approx 55,000 miles) and I didn't have any problems with the tires.
Unless the tires are directional, I wouldn't think you would have any trouble turning the white in. I just put new tires on my truck @ 70,190 miles with the white letters out.

Mike

 

I agree. You will be fine to swap them. It was decades ago that tires could not be rotated in a normal manner. You don't have to worry about that now unless you have a directional tire.

 

I agree its no problem to turn them around it would be the same as cross rotating. The boys at S & S should be able to help you on that issue.

Back in the day when I had a lowrider, the negative camber would eat up the insides of the tires in about 5000 miles so I would have them switched inside out to make them last another 5000 miles.

 

This thread reminds me of my buddy who races Legend cars.
He had slicks cut(shaped) for the hard lefthand turns of oval racing.

He discovered halfway thru the season that all four tires were mounted backwards.

With a 30 car field.
First half of the season, consistent finishes in the mid twenties, (avg =25th)
Second half of the season, all top ten finishes (avg = 8th).

The truth is, those backward mounted tires made him into one hell of a driver,.

Oh and that average of 8th place in the second half was only the 'Official' finish.
Every race, 1 to 4 cars would 'pass' him on the last lap because the top 5 cars got a postrace inspection and for some reason he never wanted to get inspected.

 

Yep, I've seen directional tires mounted backwards get eat to pieces...takes very little time!

I heard an old tire guy...and I mean old tire guy...talking about how I shouldn't flip my tires after having some miles on them. I didn't buy it either and figured I'd get some opinions here...

Thanks for the info!

 

I did not want to pay the price to flip my factory tires and of course, they lasted a lot longer than I expected. Sure was happy rto get my new tires with the black wall out!

 

I have also read that in the snow you can run directional tires backwards for better traction. Remember the Goodyear Aquatreads, they had something mentioned about doing that to them for better snow traction. But as you say dry pavement will eat them up.

 

My painter did it with my old ones, around 90 000 km's and he put them on his 04 4x4 to rid himself of those damn Hankook tires. He flipped them white's in and says they are great. I got these to replace those and as you can see black's out, love it: