A really poor man would rotate because he could throw the spare into the rotation and let the ugliness of the steel rim be damned.

Five tires will last longer than four.
If the spare gets a free ride up underneath, in ten years it's sixty pounds of worthless rubber with the most gorgeous tread you've ever seen.

 

Hey Fish; equal wear is much better than 30% in front and 80% left in back, or whatever. Wouldn't you prefer all 4 tires contacting the road equally? It's something to consider when you're driving down the highway in a snow storm, or heavy rain, etc etc.

On the other hand, I don't think rotating tires as often as many do is necessary either. If it's free then fine, but otherwise, once a year is good enough for me (I do roughly 23-25,000 km's per year), unless the wheels are already off for another reason. Might as well rotate'em then.
I have roughly 25,000 km's on my tires, but they've been rotated at least 3 times already I realize this contradicts what I just said, but, I had the wheels off, so why not rotate?

 

Interesting

 

I beat you to 1700

 

I know this, why do you think I am posting useful things such as "Interesting"

 

I can't rotate the tires on my Mustang. They're directional, and different sizes in the front and back.

Aren't BMW's, or some of them in the same boat?

 

I do think quite a few are. But what got me was the discussion that rotations provide a minimal difference in tire life.

 

While this may be true, I would bet my last dollar that you won't get the best performance.

 

Corvette's have been that way since 1984

 

Luckily, the Mustang is not my daily driver, and seasonal only. They see very little use. Otherwise I would have gotten tires I could rotate.

 

Probably true, but would the minimal performance gains be anything the average person could feel? I bet most people could not even tell you within 2 PSI what the tires are aired up to at this moment.

 

I hadn't even considered all of the vehicles out their which don't allow for tire rotation.

Scott1981, you said See now, I'm totally not surprised. This is what I've contended all along.

To which last5oh replied And to "some small degree" I would not argue with you for 1 second. But just as with tread life, I believe the differences in performance would also be minimal.
I think the exception would be, if one were to throw on a brand new set of set of tires, and run them down to where the fronts had 0% tread life left (worn out), and the rears still had 40%. Then the fronts would probably perform at 50%, or even less, while the tires with 40% tread would likely perform at 90% or better. This is why I do rotate my tires "once" at the best time, based on my experience with a whole bunch of tire sets in the past.

Peace,
Fish

 

When I say performance, I mean how the tire cuts through water during heavy rain, as an example. Everyone knows drag radials are horrible in rain. Why? Sure, they're DOT approved, because they have a tread. That tread JUST meets spec for that approval, but once you put a couple of thousand miles on them, guess what? Those tires are done and are no longer considered safe for on road use.
A tire with 30% tread is going to hydroplane at a lower speed than the same tire with 80% tread. That's the "performance" and "4 tires contacting the road equally" that I'm talkin bout. I'm not refering to auto X'ing type performance.

 

Do you guys rebalance when you rotate your tires. I just had my tires rotated this past weekend and my dealer didnt touch the balancing.

 

I don't balance them unless they need it. I did just rebalance mine mind you. They definitely needed it after 25k km's, and it's like night and day now, but I've gone a lot longer than that before needing a rebalancing. I don't think they were balanced properly when I bought these tires, especially since I brought it back 4 times before they got it right. Their balancing machine was a dinosaur and they cut weights to get it right...lol.
I just had them rebalanced at a real professional shop