I've been running rain tires for years on my Buick. They are side specific
so after installing all you can do is switch front and rear rims every
season or so. I keep the wheels well aligned and have never had any problems
with uneven wear. I'm with the article author mentioned by Nick saying that
it's better to keep the wheels aligned rather than driving with uneven tires
being constantly reshaped due to swapping.
Mark Hooper
-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Wolf [mailto:nwolf@u.washington.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 1:19 PM
To: triumphs@autox.team.net
Cc: jimmuller@pop.mail.rcn.net
Subject: Re: musings in a supermarket parking lot... and tire rotation?
Hi Jim
The spiral wheel issue has always bothered me too. Given how much more
effort goes into wheel styling than body styling on most modern cars, it's
surprising that nobody seems to mind that their car is effectively sporting
a different style on each side.
But maybe the underlying issue is tire "rotation," i.e. swapping wheels
between different corners of the car to (supposedly) maximize tire life.
Try this with side-specific wheels, and pretty soon you will have forward-
and backward-swooping wheels on the same side of the car. In John Muir's
excellent "How to keep your Volkswagen alive" repair manual (my other car is
a vintage VW) he gives some pretty good reasons NOT to rotate the tires.
The idea is that it's better to let each tire wear in its own way than to
swap them around so that each one is constantly being re-shaped to fit its
new position. If you rotate, traction is diminished and tread wear is
increased until the tires are worn flat in their new positions. Plus, the
handy telltale signs of mis-alignment (feathering, etc.) get mixed up and
obliterated.
So I was wondering, is tire rotation still the norm? Seems like it might
make a bit more sense with front-wheel-drive cars, since the front tires get
torn up so much faster than the backs, but only if the goal is to have the
whole set wear out at the same time. And who wants to drive a
front-wheel-drive car, anyway? OK, a 1300TC maybe...
How many people out there are rotating the tires on their Triumphs?
- Nick
nwolf@u.washington.edu
>From: "Jim Muller" <jimmuller@pop.mail.rcn.net>
>Subject: musings in a supermarket parking lot
>[snip]
>About half the wheels I saw were the pinwheel variety, i.e. with a spiral
> spoke pattern [...]
>One side of the car looks swoopy forward and the other swoopy backwards.
>Does it bother anyone else?
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