4RUNR

I’m planning to do a rotation and this ‘plausible’ theory by respectable posters surfaces in several tire rotation threads.



But after thinking about it for a second rotating tires only from front to rear goes against the quoted text.

Try to visualize only one side of a vehicle at a time.

The front tire has great clockwise rotational force (inside the rim) applied to it due to braking. The rear tire has great counterclockwise force applied to it due to acceleration. (Braking on rear, and on acceleration on the front is negligible in the grand schema of things)

If the tires are switched only front to back, we essentially did just what the post warns not to do!

Now the tire that had mostly clockwise force applied to it now gets counterclockwise force, and counterclockwise switched to clockwise on the other tire.

The only way to keep same rotational force direction is to use a true X pattern rotation! (That's what the original theory seems to refer to.)

(Toyota manuals for vehicles equipped with non-directional radial tires advise modified X pattern anyway, so it might not be such a big deal one way or the other. (?) )

Erc

While what you said about the forces under acceleration and braking makes sense, I think for 90% of the time your vehicle is in motion, you're not generation much clockwise or counter clockwise force.. you're just rolling (highway cruising, for example).
My manual for 2002 4Runner shows a front to back and back to front pattern.. no side changes. Tires do not appear to be directional either.

CTB

I always just rotate mine front to back.

However, in the shop that I work at during the summers, I was told that the "generally accepted" way of rotating tires is to: move the drive wheels straight (which would be straight forward on our rigs), and criss-cross the non-drive wheels.

To be honest, I'm not sure why this is the "generally accepted" way, but that's just what I was told.

4RUNR

But is it not the forces applied to the tire that the original post warns against? Not just general rotation?

Seems to me the tire doesn't know east from west, and up from down, or which direction it is rotating in, but it does care about the direction it twists in. Right?


(Afterall, if you spin a tire in a vacuum off the ground and then switch directions it would not cause the tread to separate, make the science guy watching the experiment roll over a few times and then be thrown out of the laboratory window.
Since there are no forces applied to it, why would the tire care?)

Erc

All I know is that I've got 18k on my rig, I've rotated my tires twice so far (I do it myself, so I know the wheels are torqued right) and the ride is as smooth as the day I bought it when it had 11 miles on the odometer, zero vibration and the tires appear to be wearing evenly

mtnfreak

All I can say is 'Follow the tire manufacturer's recommendations.'