Having sold my H2 with 38" tires, you MUST faithfully rotate them. I rotated them every 3K miles and on my last set, I got 48K miles on them and still had just shy of a 1/4" of tread... completely even.

Having said that.... I just turned 8K on my Mini (about 3 months old) I've been watching the wear pattern and can't differentiate between the wear on the front and the wear on the rear. (even after spending a couple of track days)

Does anyone NOT rotate their tires? If the wear is the same at this point, I'm wondering if I really need to worry about it. I've never had a car that didn't show some sort of wear on the front tires.

Just wondering....

Mark

 

I didn't begin to notice wear until ~10k miles or so. Now, at 25k, the the outside edge on the fronts are completely bald. I didn't rotate. I drive over 1100 miles/wk, so it's just not possible for me. (I'm lazy)

 

I don't rotate my tires however I'm going to be switching from summer tires to the all-season (Stock) tires in October and at that time I'm going to "rotate" them by putting the tires that were on the rear in the front. Some people say don't rotate them, other's say do it religiously, I'm somewhere in between. I'll put the tires with the most tread on the wheels responsible for most of my acceleration and braking as well as steering and let them wear from there.

 

I rotated at 5K but didn't at 10K. I will do it at 15K.

 

I switch tires summer and winter and that's when I rotate. I've been keeping an eye on the tread and it seems pretty even so far (17k, 6-7 was probably on snows). Getting close to snow tire time. :( I just mark them what corner they come off and put them on opposite.

 

I rotate my sets of wheels and tires. I don't keep one set on long enough to simply rotate them.

 

I got a question, without a spare, how would a backyard mechanic rotate the tires?

 

Are you supposed to rotate corner to corner, side to side, front to back, whatever? I thought some tires (not sure which) had direction-of-rotation arrows on them, meaning they can only be rotated front to back unless they are removed from the rims and and remounted...
.

 

To rotate the tires you really only need an extra jack. I use a larger jack from Harbor Freight (it was pretty cheap) and then the jack in the boot. I use the larger for the front tire and that almost lifts the back one as well. You may want to look at jack stands just for added safety. I have performance summer tires which are directional, so I rotate front to back.

 

You are correct... MINI tires are directional, so you rotate front to back only. You can't cross rotate side-to-side without having the tires dismounted and flipped.

The MINI makes it easy for a shade tree mechanic to rotate the tires. Spend $30 to buy a cheap floor jack and jack stand set at Pep Boys or some other large auto-parts store. Put the jack under the front jack point and lift the car... you will find that the entire side of the car will come off the ground, so you can flip the front to back / back to front very easily. Be sure to slide a jack-stand or two under the car for safety.

If your car has been lowered, you will have to upgrade your floor jack to a low-profile racing type - $80 at Harbor Freight.

 

Heh! Nice simultaneous posting! Great minds think alike!

I rotate every 5,000 miles... when I get my oil changed.

MINI suggests NOT rotating your tires. They are concerned about someone waiting 20k miles to rotate and then putting nearly bald tires in the back which may cause snap-oversteer in a wet corner (spinning the car). If you rotate regularly and often, it's a good idea. If you don't want to think about such things, it's better just to replace your front tires more often.

 

Would there be an advantage for replacing four tires over the two you would buy if you did not rotate?

Was in Costco the other day and the gentleman in front of me was getting two tires; he wanted them mounted on front but Costco told him "Costco Policy was to place the 'best' tires on the rear".

Believe he drove RWD, but would this be true on FWD as well?

If this were the case, you would get a rotation at (two) tire purchase, by installing on rear and moving existing rears to the front.

 

That depends on the specific tire. There are many different tires shipped on MINIs. The tires shipped on my MINI (ContiProContact SSR 195/55 R16) are not directional. I have been keeping them on the same side anyway when I rotate.

 

Rotate your tires, it will only extend the life. Doesn't matter if you do a cross pattern or simply back to front.

You want to keep the better tires on the rear.

 

+1 ...although all of my tires are directional (summer and winter) so I just rotate from front to back when I shift seasons. To date, this strategy seems to be working. I hope to make it to Turkey Day weekend before making the change; the snows will likely stay on until late March or early April.

 

Interesting... I thought that all MINI tires were directional. You learn something new every day. Thanks!

So the correct answer on cross rotation: Look at the sidewall of your tires. If it specifies a particular rotation, then you can only switch front to back. If it doesn't specify a rotation, look at the tread pattern. If the tread pattern looks the same way no matter which direction you look at it, you can cross rotate.

If you can cross-rotate, pick a way of doing it and do it that way for the life of the car. The key is to always do it the exact same way so that you get as even wear as is possible. I like to simply move the backs to the front (on the same side) and then cross the front wheels to the the opposite back corner.

Bald tires on the front will cause lack of acceleration due to slip and understeer (not turning as sharply as you want to) in a slick corner, but that's much easier for the average driver to handle than snap-oversteer (the back end whipping out) on a slick corner. On a front wheel drive car like the MINI, you are more likely to wear out the front tires first (as they take the brunt of wear from doing the steering AND applying power to the pavement). That's why MINI doesn't recommend rotation... someone not watching their tires and rotating regularly would probably have worn fronts and switching 'em to the back would cause the driveability issues above.

 

I never rotated my tires and I just replaced my front tires after only 12K miles! The car hasn't even seen the track yet but I drive aggressively whenever possible. These are the stock Dunlop performance run-flats.

 

AS I recall the crossing thing was meant for rotations that used the spare (5 tires). Nobody does that anymore, so now it's front/back. I did mine at 10k and there was definitely more wear on the fronts then.

 

I'm surprised that anyone rotates MINI tires. My front tires wear out about four-five times faster than the rears, and with my summer tires that means about 8K miles for the front tires.

I can't see much point in rotating when the front ones wear out almost as fast as the rotation interval, and not rotating means that the rear tires are usually in better shape than the fronts. Also, this way I only need to replace two at a time, instead of four.

 

The best tires go on the rear is correct. Check out the videos on TireRack and at Michelin. New tires in the rear give stability to the car drive independent. You never see a drag parashute attached to the front of a car.

 

You can lift both the front and rear tire high enough with just one jack. Proceed at you're own risk, though. As mentioned above, an extra jack as well as stands should be used. Also, I used a torque wrench to tighten the nuts to the specified 103 ft/lbs.

 

my two fronts were BALD after 10k

 

Also be sure to loosen all lugs before jacking up your car. Never, NEVER, go under your car unless you have jack stands and/or blocks of wood supporting your car should the jack give out. Many, many people die every year from jacks giving out, or concrete blocks used for support crumbling under the weight of their car.

 

Or to 86 ft/lbs if your car was manufactured before mid-2006 (uses the smaller 12 lug bolts instead of the 14s that come on the newer cars).

Also, to you guys burning through front tires in 8-10k miles: You might want to consider adding some negative camber up front. Yes, it will wear the inner edges more, but it saves the outer edges under agressive cornering. For under $200 you can have the Ireland Engineering fixed front camber plates that will not only add negative camber up front and increase your front-end grip in corners, but will probably add several thousand miles of wear to your front tires. You get the added benefit that they help prevent mushrooming of the front strut towers too.

If the MINI is your daily driver and you do not drive agressively, the added camber up front may be counter-productive in terms of tire wear and the increased inside edge wear may not offset the outer edge benefit.

For me, I probably get an extra 3-4k per tire set because of the front camber and the handling is GORGEOUS!

 

While driving aggressively on a lot of hairpin mountain roads, the front tires on my `05 S wear very evenly, much to my surprise.