Tire rotation

According to the manual, the tires are supposed to be rotated from front to back only. Every other car that I ever owned, you were supposed to switch sides with one set and move front to back. The tires are not directional so what’s up?

As a side note: I have the reggae wheels and apparently there is not enough clearance for wheel weights to fit between the high ledge on the wheel and the caliper in the front. I almost found out the hard way. I’m going to have the dealer rebalance the wheel avoiding that ledge. I just love my dealer…… the idiots who did it in the first place.




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2000 Black Jetta GLS TDI With 1/2 turn on the turbo (Wimp)...

Most tire experts will tell you there is no reason to cross rotate the tires unless there is some kind of alignment problem causing unusual wear. I disagree, though. Most of the engine's torque is transmitted through the right front wheel in normal driving, and that tire will tend to wear more quickly.

Unfortunately, many tires are directional these days. My new Pilots are directional, so after the first two rotations I plan to have them switched to the opposite side wheels and go through two more rotations. That should be time for new tires, and hopefully I'll get a little bit better wear out of them. If you have really fancy tires that are both directional and asymmetric you have to keep them on the same side no matter what! In fact, Pirelli makes high performance tires that are directional, asymmetric AND come in two different tread patterns for front and rear use! They are specific to one corner of the car and cannot be rotated. That doesn't seem like a very wise idea to me.

-mickey

Mickey's right!

However, if you still feel the need to cross-rotate nondirectional tires, you can do it 1/2 way through the tire's life, otherwise, from front to rear is all you need to do on front-wheel drive vehicles.

The VW dealer told me every 10k miles on the same side. Goodyead on the other hand told me every 6K miles and you should cross them. I asks the dealer on this. Goodyear wants long lasting tires (That's a laugh) and VW wants to look good for consumer's reports for low maintenance. Bottom line, do what you feel is best for you. Either way, VW & Goodyear will not back you.

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99 Jetta TDI (A4)

If you like the tires, why not just leave them on til it's time to get new ones on the front and get one of the same kind (spare rotation). Of course, the tire line could get discontinued.

Every time anybody touches the car is an opportunity to mess something up.

yes Karl, I do that with my Honda. I never rotate. When the front tires wear out the rear tires are moved to the front, and I put the 2 new tires on the rear. Sometimes I leave the rear tires on the rear and put the new tires on the front - the rear tires seem to last forever that way. The tire shop thinks I'm a bit crazy, but it's my car.

My '86 MR2's al wheels were very hard to balance. I didn't want to mess with a good thing once I had it set.

Howardz, that's wacky/backwards.

With your front wheel drive you are always getting less than top traction and braking.

The rear wheels could be bald and it wouldn't matter much (try and wear them out - bet they outlast the fronts 10 to 1).

Use the best tires where they count.

My usual procedure when I buy a new front-wheel drive car is to replace the factory front tires with a good set of aftermarket replacements. (on my Jetta I chose Michelin X-One's). I leave the cheesy stock tires on the back. Usually, the backs don't wear out until I dump the car, and I end up replacing the fronts once. Unfortunately, this time around the Goodyears on the back are showing signs of excessive wear and cupping, while the fronts look as though they will go at least another 40,000 miles. At least I have that spare set of Goodyears to throw on the back. This plan has worked well for me in the past, I always have a good set of tires where the action is, and some not so good tires to keep the back of the car from scraping on the road.

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1998 Black Jetta TDi
Bilstein HD Struts/shocks
TDi Tuning Box

Best practice in my opinion is to have the tires with the most tread on the rear. VW (and all front drive manufacturers) set up our cars to understeer (front pushes out first) when approaching the max cornering force. If the tires with less tread are on the rear, the back end of the car will step out easier in aggressive cornering or accident avoidance maneuvers. Try pulling your e brake in the snow sometime and see what happens to your control of the car. It will likely swap ends if you aren't prepared. You'll always prefer the fronts to slide before the rears, trust me.

um here's an idea. How about just following VW's recommendation. They don't make any $ from new tires you buy and they *do* actuall engineer and build the vehicle. I'm going to trust them here.

I suppose that this is about like a helmet thread on a motorcycle list, but here's my less than 2 cents. F-R every 5-6K YMM(obviously)V.

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--Don
"The sweet sound of 50
MPG!"

[This message has been edited by donniemac (edited March 26, 2000).]