Most of the time dealer's don't want to rotate tires that are old or worn below a determined tread block height to the back of the car. Tire manufactures strongly discharge mounting worn tires on the back and new tires on the front. Cars are designed for understeer for safety. If you put good tires in the front and worn tires on the back the car can understeer first (as it should) and then just after the steering comes back the car can oversteer resulting in a hazardous setup for most unskilled or inattentive drivers. So if your front tires have significant wear I am pretty sure a dealer would encourage you to not rotate them to the rear. Rotating is best done frequently (every 5K). With Mini's 15,000 mile oil change/ maintenance intervals and aggressive driving front wheel drive cars I am sure they decided to forgo tire rotation to avoid oversteer.

 

If you have directional tires all you can do is go back to front and front to back.

 

As much as I agree with what Porthos said:

I have never run my directional tires backwards but I have seen it done under certain conditions. The dry performance has no measurable difference running forward or backwards. Wet conditions has a measurable difference.

Diagonal rotation was used to put a full size spare tire in the mix. Minis don't have a full size spare (if at all) so diagonal rotation is somewhat pointless on a Mini. The other justification for diagonal rotation is to balance out the left and right turns (over ware on one side v.s. the other).

What I do with my directional tires when they are about 1/2 way through life is flip them. The way to do it is, 1) Remove the tire from the wheel. 2) Remount the tire on the wheel with the outside side wall on the inside. 3) Replace the altered wheel assembly on the other side of the car (do it with all 4 tires). The tires still turn the same direction as they did before but the edges are now on the opposite inside / outside. Flipping works great. Then rotate back to front as you did before until the tires need to be replaced.

 

Mmmm if you run directional tires backwards it might not affect the performance but they will be louder and they will wear out faster.

 

I agree that tire noise may increase after a tire (any type of tire with tread) is rotated to the other side of the car and turns the opposite direction. Tire design and tread patterns make a difference when it comes to more or less noise. In the early days of radials the bead would get stressed in the other direction. The bead gap could open and the tire could lose air. The belts were designed in one direction on early directional radials but I believe that that practice stopped because people can't be trusted to mount tires correctly. Tire construction and materials have improved so the risks are lower on most newer tires.

Learn more about tire direction from tirerack.com:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...jsp?techid=188

 

I'll give tire rotation a try. I'm going to do front to back, on the same side and see how it goes.

 

Good grief! That's too OCD even for me!

Tom S

 

When you spend $1400 on a set of race tires that are staggered and you can't rotate front to back you learn how to get every mile out of them.

 

Does anyone know the torque specs and the pattern to screw in the oil pan screws for the r56? Can't seem to find it anywhere...

 

Now, I've grown up around working on cars and have worked in the automotive industry in one way or another my whole life, so "easy" is relative to me.

With that, since I've owned my 07 MCS for the past 6 months:
-Rear pads/rotors: Not any harder than any other car I've done. Now I do have a piston press tool, so screwing in the pistons was a breeze. COULD I have done it with other methods? Yes, but that tool, if you do brakes more than once, is a fantastic time save.

-Oil change: Again, not hard at all. Very straight forward. Just need to move a couple things out of the way to do the filter, but it's all very basic hand tool stuff.

-Installation of Forge Motorsport blow off adapter: Fairly simple. Granted, because of lacking some space, you are limited on what type/size of Allen key will fit, but it was seriously an easy task.

-Muffler delete: This I guess I would put at a slightly higher skill level. I weld and can fabricate some nice things if I need to. If you aren't a welder or exhaust fabricator, I wouldn't do this on your own.

 

Interested in this info as well

 

Oil pan to crankcase is 12Nm

 

OP was about maintenance not mods.

Yes I do quite a bit. Oil filters, plugs, brakes... But, don't forget about other, owner do-able things - coolant, trans, brake fluid fill/flush... and on and on...

But one of the best things that anyone can do is - Inspect!' Take a look at things, top, bottom, underhood... Learn from owners manual, Bentley Manual, this forum. Become knowledgable instead of posting here at the 11th hour... ... " my blinky light is on.... " "Betsy is going sweak, sweak, pop, pop...." At least if you have to get service you will be able to do so with other than a "deer in the headlights" experience base.

 

That's correct, and it's 8.8 ft/lbs for those of us on this side of the pond.

Tom S