Does your dealer tell you NOT to Rotate your tires?

[nwoods]

I think they should be rotated. My fronts wear faster than the rears, so I rotate them. I get my tires road force balanced, which means they are spun up to speed on a rig and balanced accordingly. It's the only way to balance the Nitto's (they are tricky to balance), and I insist on doing it for the Coopers as well. But I get them balanced and aligned quarterly regardless. I just had them done last weekend again,and one wheel was 2oz off! I suspect I lost a weight somewhere along the trail...

 

[broiler]

Even with AWD fronts will generally wear faster than rears due to steering. And because of AWD a lot of times you will have to replace all 4 tires, even if only 2 are really worn. Because of this, I frequently rotate my tires front to rear. These tires are expensive enough already!

 

[jmrivera]

We don't have enough miles on our LR3 yet, but I can tell you that I never bothered to rotate the tires on all the Audis I have owned and they wear evenly. I think full time 4WD or all wheel drive wears the tires pretty evenly.

So do the rear tires on your vehicles turn like the front???

I cannot begin to imagine that front tires would not wear faster than the rear on any vehicle, 4WD, AWD, RWD, or FWD. Physics my friend, physics... You cannot overcome physics.... Oh yeah, then there is materials....

Did you also buy tires from the dealer???

All tires must be rotated and most tire manufactures reccomend 5,000 mile intervals... Your vibration may have come form a buildup of material (brake dust, road grim, etc.) on the inside of the wheel. It may have been deposited on there in such a manner that corresponded to the wheel location (driver fornt and rear, passenger front and rear). When the wheels got rotated, its baseline was disrupted and thus the vibration...

Are your wheel interior walls free of material? Try removing the wheels and scrubbing the interior with a firm carpet brush and soap... Rinse and repeat until the metal is all that is showing...

 

[codemonkey]

So do the rear tires on your vehicles turn like the front???

I cannot begin to imagine that front tires would not wear faster than the rear on any vehicle, 4WD, AWD, RWD, or FWD. Physics my friend, physics... You cannot overcome physics.... Oh yeah, then there is materials....
.

Physics is a lot more complicated than you assume - what the front wheels are doing depends a lot on how the car is driven, and what the drivetrain is designed to do.

For my RWD cars the rears generally wear faster than the fronts, though it's hard to generalize. How much depends on usage - on a car where I primarily do a lot of highway miles, mostly straight, the rears wear a lot faster. Cars that I do a lot of the mountain roads on (lots of turning and braking, and the occasional tail-hanging), it's closer.

You really can't make a blanket statement like "AWD cars always wear like X" either - some AWD systems are basically FWD until the fronts slip, then it transfers power to the rear. Others may be the opposite, others may be closer to 50/50. You really can't generalize until you know what the system does.

And you really can't even generalize at all, like I pointed out with driving conditions/style, it can have a huge effect.

 

[mtbutler93]

i have run thru two sets of goodyear's and founf that when i rotated the 2nd set i got more mileage out of them. My dealer told me the same story about not rotating but i'm running michelin's now and will rotate them as well.

Sounds like uneven wear on your LR3 but that's alignment problem

 

[JackMac]

i have run thru two sets of goodyear's and founf that when i rotated the 2nd set i got more mileage out of them. My dealer told me the same story about not rotating but i'm running michelin's now and will rotate them as well.

Sounds like uneven wear on your LR3 but that's alignment problem

+1

I have the 19" Goodyears, and was one of the early owners to report the tire wear issue in 2005. Got a similar nonsense statement from the dealer indicating that rotations were not necessary.

I now rotate now every 5K miles and am getting significantly longer life from the Goodyear Wrangler HP's than most others are reporting. Also, keep in mind that LR does not provide the tire warranty. That coverage comes from the tire manufacturer. The manufacturer says to rotate at least every 6K miles. Fortunately, a local tire shop nearby does the rotations for free, making it a no-brainer.

About the vibration, no doubt there is some issue with one or both of your rear tires which results in you feeling the vibration when rotated to the front. Your dealer knows very well that you feel front wheel vibrations much more than rear, which is why they rotated back. That simply masks the issue. I suspect your rear tires may be slightly cupped on the inside tread. If one was bent or way out of balance, you would feel that (even from the rear).

 

[toddjb122]

If I have them rotated back where they were, will the vibration go away once they wear in the new position? It is not a severe vibration, just something I noticed that wasn't there prior to service.

Thanks.

 

[codemonkey]

If I have them rotated back where they were, will the vibration go away once they wear in the new position? It is not a severe vibration, just something I noticed that wasn't there prior to service.

Thanks.

I think you were on the right track in your original post - have them balanced in their current positions, withut rotating them back. I've seen this on a number of cars over the years.

 

[PaulLR3]

Hey jmrivera, I'm not the physics expert that you are, but I am sure that the tires on my '96 A4, '98 A4, '02 allroad and current '06 A4 wear evenly without rotating. I do notice slightly more wear up front on winter tires so I do rotate those each winter. Maybe there is more wear on the fronts because I'm driving the twisty mountain roads of Vermont in the winter. And since you want to know where I buy my tires...I usually get them from Tire Rack.

 

[schafari]

I just rotated mine front to back, and then the backs to front, but switching sides. The truck rides fine, and is perhaps more smooth. (Likely due to the rebalance.)