Car tire rotation : What you need to know
Tire rotation refers to the process of switching out the placement of your tires to help maintain an even tread and prolong their lifespan as they are mounted on your vehicle.
In other words, you're rotating the position of all of your tires on your vehicle, switching them out from back to front, diagonally, left or right, or otherwise. These different tire positions are known as tire rotation patterns.
Why is a car tire rotation so important to do? Here's what do you need to know about car tire rotation.
I. Car tire rotation benefits
Tire rotation can bring so many benefits for your car tires if it's done regularly. The tire rotation will maintain all tire wear at the same time and bring so many benefits for its usage. Here are car tire rotation benefits.
1. Longer tire lifespan
Car tire rotation can keep a longer tire lifespan. As we know, your cars have different portions and weights. For example, the front tires carry more than 60% of your car's weight, so the front tires wear down faster than the rear ones.
If we don't do tire rotation, we will replace the front tire faster. But, if we do the tire rotation regularly, we can only reduce the speed of damage to the front tires. Wear rates between the front tires and the rear tires can be evenly distributed. Therefore, tire rotation can extend the lifetime of all tires that we use.
2. Saving more money
The biggest benefit of doing tire rotation is saving more money for the long term. For example, wear on the front tire. If we do not rotate the front tire with the rear tire regularly, the front tire will wear out faster. So we need to change the front tire only.
Because the load and the level of wear on the front tire is faster, it is likely that the next replacement we need to replace all car tires, front and rear tires. So, we need at least six tires to buy.
That will be different if we do a tire rotation. We need to replace four tires at the same time without additional costs for replacing the two front tires.
3. Get maximum tire benefits
Uneven wear on the tire will make it difficult to control the steering, especially in wet road conditions. When we don't do tire rotations, we cannot maintain wear on all of the tires. Then we lose the maximum tire benefits for all tires that we used.
II. How often should car tires be rotated?
The first thing to know about how often we should rotate car tires is to check your car's owner's manual for the recommended tire rotation schedule. Most car manufacturers recommend that you need to rotate your tires every 5.000 miles.
Here's an easy way to remember when you need to rotate your tires: Do it whenever you change the oil on your car's engine.
III. Pay attention to the tire tread pattern
Each tire is created to meet different driving needs. There are tires for regular conditions and some for special needs such as sports, for example. This condition forms a different tire rotation patterns.
"One-way" tread patterns are optimized for the direction of the tires rotate on the car, so they're specifically made for either the left or right side. This tires type is known as Directional tires. The grooves are angled to optimize handling and do a good job of channeling water out from under the tire on wet surfaces, reducing hydroplaning and improving wet traction.
The opposite is Non-Directional tires. The tread pattern on non-directional tires is designed so the tire can be mounted on the wheel for any direction of rotation. You can switch which side the tires are on when you rotate them.
An easy way to know about directional tires or non-directional tires is through the tire sidewall. The directional tires had an arrow mark to indicate the way the tire was supposed to turn. In contrast, the non-directional tires don't have an arrow mark on the sidewall.
Directional tire rotation pattern
To rotate directional tires, switch the front right tire for the back right tire and the front left tire for the back left tire. Look at the image below that shows the tire rotation direction for directional tires:
Non directional tires rotation
The best pattern for non directional tires rotation pattern is use the butterfly pattern.
- Move left rear tire to right front tire
- Right front tire move to the right rear tire
- Right rear tire move to left front tire
- Left front tire moves to the left rear tire.
Or you can use a simple way to non directional tire rotation pattern, rotate it with a cross pattern. For cars with rear-wheel drive, move the rear tires to the opposite sides of the front. It's kind of like this, left-front tire move to right-rear tire, and right-front tire move to left-rear tire. Look at the image below that shows the tire rotation direction for non directional tires:
How about the spare tire? For most modern cars, spare tire has different forms from main tires. They're often smaller and feature a lighter-weight construction and shallower tread depth. They don't design for extended driving but only to help you get the nearest auto shop to fix the original main tire. Anyway, if you have a spare tire just the same as the main tire, you can do tire rotation just like this :
IV. How to do car tire rotation?
Once you’ve determined the correct rotation pattern for your car, rotating your tires is more a matter of time and physical ability than anything else. Here’s a how-to guide for you to follow to a car tire rotation sequence:
- Make sure your car is parked on a level surface.
- Engage the parking brake to ensure your safety.
- Loosen the lug nuts on all of your wheels, but don’t remove them completely.
- Use a car jack to elevate one wheel, place a jack stand under it and remove the tire.
- Follow this sequence with each other tires, and rearrange them according to the best rotation pattern for your vehicle.
- Finally, carefully follow the steps above in reverse order, and always remember to use a torque wrench to tighten up all the lug nuts on your wheels.