Why do you need to practice tire rotation?
You may notice some instances where your front tires wear quicker than your rear tires and the thing is, it’s perfectly normal, according to my friend who has a brother working as a car dealer. But can you do something about it? Of course you can, and it only involves two words: Tire rotation.
And no, rotating your tires doesn’t mean you’ll literally spin your tires around. Tire rotation is a process of swapping the rear and front tires so that they will wear out evenly.
Getting an even tire wear is recommended so that the overall performance of your car will be consistent. This is difficult to achieve if one set of tires are more worn out than the other. And since the tires waste away at approximately similar rates, tire rotation also adds longevity to the tread of your vehicle.
Do front tires always get the greater “wear-and-tear” treatment?
According to our GM dealer customer, the unfortunate and resounding answer is yes. Like soldiers on the front lines, the front tires are where most of the “attacks” happen. And when I say “attacks”, these include the numerous curve turns, parallel parking, and three point turns that we have saddled our cars since time immemorial, which means that the front tires absorb much of the pressure of these activities.
So how can we rotate car tires?
I had posed this question to a friend when we went to a GMC dealer, and he answered that there are in fact four ways in performing tire rotation, all of which are applicable to a regular four-wheel drive:
1. Swapping the front-left tire to the rear-left tire, front-right to the rear-right and putting the rear-right to the front-left, and rear-left to the front-right.
2. Placing the rear-left tire to the front-left tire, rear-right to the front-right, and transferring the front-right tire to the rear-left tire, and the front-left tire to the rear-right.
3. Exchanging the front-left tire with the rear-right tire and conversely, the front-right tire with the rear-left tire.
4. You can also just as easily swap the front-left tire with the rear-left tire, and the front-right tire with the rear-right tire.
When should the tires be rotated?
A local car dealer customer, who also happens to be a close buddy of mine, is of the opinion that only when your car had totalled 3,000 miles should you immediately swap your tires. Others, however, insist that there’s no need to swap your tires if your car didn’t clock a total of 10,000 to 15,000 miles on the road. No matter how much your car had travelled, though, they all agree that your tires should be rotated even if they show no obvious signs of tearing.
These all may seem, at first glance, to contain an unusual amount of work just for changing a tire, but as what a GM dealer customer said, if you’re of the opinion that the things that you can simply do yourself is worth doing, then all the work should be worth it.
So put your car into park mode, turn off the engine, and bring out those jacks. Time to rotate your cars. As what my friend who purchased from a local gm dealer said, it’s a simple task that will save you bucks in the long run. Plus, it’s something that you can effectively do all by yourself. So opt for longer tire life. Rotate those tires before you say bye-bye to your car’s rubber sole. Tire rotation is an important car maintenance procedure that you must not miss. Practice it today.
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