Due to the aggressive alignment my tires wear more on the inside than the outside. Since my tires do not have a directional tread pattern I thought about flipping the tires around on the rim (so the inside would now be the outside). When I asked my local tire shop about this, they said they were not allowed to do this (as per a company directive). Is there some reason they are not allowed to do this? Is doing this a bad idea?

 

Check the tire to see if it has an "OUTSIDE" label. If it does, even if its an asymmetrical tread, they are still considered directional.

 

front, rear or all 4 ? my rears are slightly cocked in at the top. for that reason I buy tires 2 at a time. the front ones wear faster so I wear those out & put new tires on front rims BUT I put them on the rear & move the rear tires to the front. that way I've always got new ones on back until the front ones wear out. yes, that's the way to rotate when your tires have an OUTSIDE label on 'em. I run 215/40 ZR 18 - Sumitomo HTR Z5 Z series = 150+ mph I may eventually have my rears toed-out a pinch since I carry no weight in rear. that's why they are toed-in stock.. I had no spare with my non-run flat tires, so I bought Nuespeed 18x7.5" rim, jack, 4-way lug wrench & waited for front 2 to wear down. (I got 4 spacers on rims)

 

Generally speaking the less tires are removed from a wheel then reinstalled the better. My SOP is to get new tires and then leave them be -- at least don't remove them to change their position. I am even reluctant to rotate tires/wheels. I prefer to use the car in such a way -- and with an alignment that is conducive to this -- to keep tire wear even side to side and even axle to axle.

As others have mentioned there can be a preferred mounting of the tire to so it has the desired forward rotation.

Thus my advice would be to find a way to get rid of that "aggressive alignment" and to eliminate the uneven tire wear.

My experience with other cars over the years is uneven tire wear -- inside edge tire wear -- is a toe problem. This has been the case for both front tires and rear tires. I had one car that due to excessive toe in at the rear tires went through a set of rear tires in 8K miles. When I had new tires fitted and the car aligned the tech at my request used a less aggressive toe setting -- but still within the factory guidelines -- and tire life was 20K+ miles which for the car and tires was considered quite good.

In the meantime rather than remove the tires you can just move the tires/wheels from the front of the car to the rear axle and the tires/wheels from the rear of the car to the front axle. The tires stay on their wheels. The tire direction of rotation is the same.

But look into an alignment. While alignment with used tires may not deliver the best results my experience has been with a good tech the alignment is darn good and even after new tires fitted the new tires showed no signs of alignment issues.

 

Radial tire belt has a rotation "memory" reversing rotation will have adverse effects.

Put the right on left and vice versa without reversing rotation

 

I use a boring front cross rotation (typical for front wheel drive vehicles, as the MINI is excepting the All4), every 5000 miles, and, um, I ain't dead yet.

For reference, tires are Bridgestone DriveGuard 205/45R17 (2, run-flats) and Bridgestone DriveGuard Plus 205/50R17 (2, run-flats). The 205/45s are going to be replaced by 205/50s when they either hit "that time" from a treadwear standpoint or get run-flatted.

 

First I’ve even heard that…

 

The business about radial tire belts having rotation memory that required keeping tires on the same side of the vehicle goes back to the introduction of radial tires (mid-20th century). There was a time when it was true. I found forum posts (other forums) from tire techs in 2011, for example, stating that they had been taught this 30 years prior (1980s). I remember wading through this "should you switch the tire to the other side during rotation" in the 2nd half of the 1990s.

Technology had shifted on this by the mid-1990s (if not earlier). So long as a tire was not flagged as directional -- which means there is a rotation direction explicitly marked on the tire, NOT just that the tire had an "inside" and an "outside" -- the expectation was that you would use a rotation pattern that might very well reverse the spin direction of the tire (front cross rotation, rear cross rotation, X rotation, 5-tire versions of rotations to include a full size spare).

For some vehicles, in fact, you would find explicit direction in the owner's manual to use such rolling-direction-reversing rotations, at a time when radial tires had long become the *only* tires in the mainstream consumer market to put on a car.

In terms of present rule of thumb, a directional tire is going to have a rotation direction explicitly marked on at least the outside wall, with an arrowhead, and/or the word 'rotation' or 'direction.' You do not want to run such a tire in the opposite direction.

If a rotation direction is not marked on the tire, it is a multidirectional tire. Even if it has asymmetric or directional-looking tread.

I won't say there aren't exceptions to this, but they would be just that: exceptions, and rare ones. Final authority would be to dig up the tech specs on the specific tire make/model on the manufacturer website.