Tire Rotating Question

[CaliDreamer]

So a couple quick questions:
- Do you suggest rotating tires by the designated rotation pattern (specified in manual) or by tire wear?

- Also, any reason why a non-directional tire shouldn't be rotated side-to-side on the 4runner? (contrary to what the manual reccomends)

Here's the background:
Purchased my 08 T4R late last year. Today I noticed some minor interior edge wear on my passenger front tire so I decided to rotate all the tires. Originally I was going to just move front to back and back to front, but then I remembered I had a full sized spare. With this in mind I ended up rotating based on tire wear, putting the tires with the most tread on the front, and the least tread/wear on the back. The spare still had 100% tread, while all others had about 70%. When all was said and done, the tire with the most uneven wear/least tread, went in place of the spare.

Anyone see any problems with this?

 

[K.C.]

Five Tire Rotation Pattern

The 4th generation 4Runner comes equipped with a full size spare tire mounted on a matching full size aluminum alloy wheel. I have upgraded the spare tire as well to a 32" Bridgestone A/T Revo tire. The one inch larger than factory P265/70/R17 tire does fit in the stock spare location.

A Five tire rotation pattern results in equally distributed use that will help maintain equivalent tread depths on all five tires throughout their life. When applied to the 4Runners full time four wheel drive system (all wheel drive is standard with the V-8 engine option), this will prevent driveline damage if a flat tire forces a spare to be put into service with partially worn tires on the other three wheel positions.

By rotating the spare into the pattern, you accomplish a secondard benefit of extending the other tires life a little longer and getting useage out of the spare. Remember, tires have a shelf life and do dry out after many years. You may as well get some use out of the spare rather than discarding it unused when your main four tires wear out.

I have chosen to rotate my tires every 5,000 miles using the pattern shown below. The spare will be inserted in the passenger side rear position at each rotation. Place the tire that would have gone to the right rear in the spare location until the next tire rotation.

Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revo with UNI-T AQII P265/70/R17
2007 Toyota 4Runner Sport Edition Tire Upgrade

via J.A.

 

[Autbond]

I wouldnt rotate the tires except front to back, especially if the tires have been used to rotating in one direction they are more likely to have issues if you switch the direction. Just go front to rear, I know a lot of people that have only gotten about 15k miles out of these Nitto Mud Grapplers that I have. I filled mine with Nitrogen and rotate them front to rear about every 4k miles and they have about 20k on them and have plenty of tread left.

 

[Vanuatoo]

I have the following question:

Maintenance schedule always states two conditions: mileage and time passed since the last maintenance.

I understand that the oil degrades depending on mileage and time too, but what about tires?

I mean if you want all of your tires to wear out evenly, each tire should stay on his position equal time between rotations.

So when Toyota states 6 months or 5000 miles, you may have the situation where first 6 months you drove 1000 miles and next 6 months you drove 3000 miles.

For me it means that all tires will wear out unevenly.

Do you think that time should not be considered when doing tire rotation?

 

[M1911]

I do a 4 tire rotation, back to front and front to back.

 

[Autbond]

No, I would not do a tire rotation based on time at all, only mileage. What you said is exactly right, if you did this then there would be uneven wear. Depending on your tires you don't need to do it every 5k miles anyway.

 

[Merle]

I do my tire rotation based upon mileage (5000), and it's a front-to-back pattern because my spare is a different size now.

 

[CaliDreamer]

All things being equal, I would agree 100% with what most everybody is saying,.. rotating every 5k miles, front to back and vice versa or whatever pattern as long as the tread pattern doesn't play a factor.

My biggest concern (and a small one at that) is that my tires don't look like they have ever been rotated. So what I'm trying to do, if possible is even things up a bit if I can. As I said in the original post, my spare has 100% tread life while the rest of the tires are at about 70%, so I'm trying to put it in a place that will wear the quickest (and then rotate maybe in shorter intervals accordingly to even up tread wear).

On a V6 that only runs in 4wd mode about 5% of the time, do you think front or rear axle gets more wear?

 

[JB.]

All things being equal, I would agree 100% with what most everybody is saying,.. rotating every 5k miles, front to back and vice versa or whatever pattern as long as the tread pattern doesn't play a factor.

My biggest concern (and a small one at that) is that my tires don't look like they have ever been rotated. So what I'm trying to do, if possible is even things up a bit if I can. As I said in the original post, my spare has 100% tread life while the rest of the tires are at about 70%, so I'm trying to put it in a place that will wear the quickest (and then rotate maybe in shorter intervals accordingly to even up tread wear).

On a V6 that only runs in 4wd mode about 5% of the time, do you think front or rear axle gets more wear?

Get a tread depth guage and make sure the new spares tread is no more than 4/32 deeper than the rest. If it's OK, don't worry about putting it in the spot to create the most wear, just put it in like in K.C.s pic and follow that pattern. Then, like you said, rotate more frequently