How and Why You Should Rotate Your Car Tires

It is natural for tires to rotate. But we are really talking about moving or interchanging the tires to different tire positions of the car and this may even involve reversing the direction in which they turn. Tire rotation ensures that your tires wear out evenly which helps extend the useful mileage of the tire.

Why rotate tires?

The weight of the car in the front is greater than that in the rear because most cars have their engine in front and coupled with the stress of steering and braking which occurs in the front, the front tires naturally endures more weight than the rear tires. As a result, there is an uneven wear between the front and rear tires.

Secondly, car turns and twists cause an uneven wear and make the front tire to wear disproportionately. For example, in countries with Right hand traffic such as Nigeria, performing right turns seem to be a bit tighter than left turns and thus the front left tires wear out faster than the front right tires because of the greater distance the left tire will have to travel to make the turn. Leaving the tires un-rotated for so long a time makes the outside edges of the front tires to wear out faster than the other tires.

Poor alignment and unbalanced tires can also cause tires to wear unevenly. Rotating the tires keeps them from wearing disproportionately as a result and makes the steering handling and the car ride smoother and safer. Rotating tires extends the useful life of the tires and helps you save some cool Naira in the long run.

How do you rotate tires?

Rotating your car tires might not be that simple. It is not just moving tires around. No! There are certain tire rotation patterns that must be followed for maximum benefit. Following these patterns depends on a number of factors:

If you have directional or non-directional tires. Directional tires are designed to rotate only in one direction and should be on the same side of the car. As shown in the diagram on the right, directional tires have arrows on the sidewall of the tire that indicates the direction the tire should rotate.

If the car is front-wheel, rear-wheel, or all-wheel drive

If you have differently-sized tires in your car.


Same size Non-directional Tires

fwdcross pattern.jpg

Forward Cross: In this pattern, the front tires are moved straight back to the rear while the rear tires are moved to the opposite sides of the front. This pattern is particularly used if your car is a front-wheel drive.



x-pattern.jpg

X – Pattern: This is an alternative pattern to the Forward Cross used for cars with front-wheel drives. In this pattern, the front tires are moved to the opposite rear tire positions while the rear tires are moved to the opposite front tire positions.



Rwd pattern.jpg

Rear Cross: This pattern is mainly used if you have a rear-wheel drive or 4-wheel drive cars. In this pattern, the front tires are moved to the opposite rear tire positions while the rear tires are moved straight up to the front.



Different size Non-directional Tires

side-to-side pattern.jpg

Side-to-side Pattern: This pattern is used when you have a vehicle that the tires are of different sizes and also non-directional. In this pattern, the front tires are moved to the opposite side of each other while the rear tires are moved to the opposite side of each other as well.



Directional Tires

front-to-back pattern.jpg

Front-to-back Pattern: As mentioned earlier, directional tires are designed to only rotate in the same direction because of its treading pattern. Therefore, if you have directional tires, it can only be rotated from front to back (or vice versa) on the same side of the car. The front tires are moved to the rear tire positions on the same side and the rear tires moved to the front also on the same side of the car.

We hope this has been very informative and we thank you for reading.

Source:http://carblognaija.com/rotate-car-tires/