didnt rotate them enough and now the back tires are both pretty bad. just ordered some H-sport arms to correct the issue, but should i rotate them to the front now or leave them be, and get some new tires and an alignment when the new arms get here?

 

It's more typical to have tires with most amount of tread up front as these are front drive cars. So when new tires are purchased rotate your fronts to the back.

And MINI does not recommend "regular maintenance" rotations as the built in rear camber which helps to provide the gokart handling wears out the back ones quicker on the inside edges.

There are two schools of thought on this, as soon you will hear. But IMO MINI's "suggestion" is easier on the pocket book, especially if you have runflats. Two tires, mounted and balanced is a hell of a lot easier on the check book than X4. My 2 pence......

 

I recommend to all my customers to rotate their tires every 3-5k miles. Tires will last so much longer.

 

+1 from 34 years of FWD experience across many vehicles of many sizes.

 

yeah i meant to rotate more regularly, but what should i do now? i was hoping to switch to a different tire for my next set but am not a fan of two different tires. but now that i think of it that might not bother me. i want to switch to BFG KDWs.

 

I would still rotate to get a more even wear and get rid of all four later for new ones.

I had BFG KDWs. Hope the new ones are much less noisy than the ones I had.

 

i have them on my truck and love the performance, but that truck is way too loud to hear any noise be it road or tire. plus they look awesome. i have always wanted to put a set on a car.but if they are too noisy.... they dont last long anyway.

 

I think Gray Raven's "other" school of thought may have some merit based on my experiences with my previous MINI. I was a religious rotator every 4K miles first with the OEM Contis, then the follow-on set of Hankook Ventus, and finally a set of Yoko S.drives (not counting winter months when I ran a set of dedicated snow tires). Didn't matter which tires were in play, the rears clearly showed the most wear on the inside edge (both the Hankooks and the Yokos suffered from some premature cupping despite the regular rotations) due to the negative camber. I even checked for excessive toe in, thinking that might be the cause, but there was none. The fronts always wore relatively evenly.

What sucked was when the semi-worn rears got rotated to the front. The tire noise from the front due to the more neutral camber became increasingly unbearable at each rotation, and towards the end of their (supposedly) usable life I felt--and sounded--like I was driving a Jeep with clod-busters. The high-freq vibration added cabin rattles and provided an unwelcome forearm massage through the steering wheel.

Ergo, I'm seriously thinking about changing schools. YMMV.

 

you could take a little camber out of the rear... but i guess that would defeat the point of the mini a little bit.

 

I ran them for a couple of track days trying to wear the KDWs out. I actually though they had pretty average grip at best compared to the Dunlop Z1 Star Spec or the Bridgestone RE11.

 

First post - great info here, thanks. I have a question re. cupping and rotating. Had not considered NOT rotating, so that's something to think about, but I am replacing two worn run-flats on the front (were on back last rotation) with Kumho Ecsta AST's (non-RF). The two Kumho run-flats that are on the back have only about 4000 mi. but are due to be rotated and are showing a bit of cupping. Any thoughts on swapping that pair side to side (un-mount/re-mount inside out to keep the direction), and keeping them on the rear to get a little more mileage out of them, and to "counter" the cupping? Talked to Discount Tire guy when I ordered the new ones and he said "sure, we can do that", but is that an acceptable solution?

 

I would recommend not mixing runflat & non-runflat tires on the same car. The tires are going to behave differently. The result could be wonky handling.

As far as rotations go I'm a believer. It makes the tires last longer & gives you a chance to eyeball the brakes.

 

The cure for wearing the inside of the tires is to corner harder.

 

Or take camber out of the rear and the car will handle better. Most of the time people run too much rear camber IMO.

- Andrew

 

Rotate !

Do it more often, to try and keep the wear even . . . . . . . .

 

 

My 2006 MINI came with -1.8 from the factory. We could only get it down to -1.5 degrees. 2005 & 2006 have a little adjustment available earlier cars do not. If I want to take any more out I'll need a set of adjustable lower arms. Ideally I think -1 degree would be the number I'd shoot for.

Even though I'm at -1.5 if I don't rotate my tires will look like your do if I don't rotate enough.