Tires - older ones on front or back?

yes, that's what I've been doing for six years. Just putting the best pair on the front regardless of whether they were on front or back the previous year.

Now the experts are telling me I must keep the best pair on the back, which amounts to a ban on rotating except when buying a new pair.

Harvey51 wrote:
Winter tires are expensive to rotate left/right because they would have to be mounted the other way on the rim to turn in their tread design direction.

Directional tires get rotated front to back only, not side to side. It's in any owners manual you open that being said, if they're only used in the winter, you probably don't put enough mileage on them in a season to require rotating them.

I said "can't rotate" because, keeping the most worn tires on the front where they wear a bit faster implies that you will never rotate them to the back where the better tires must be.. Winter tires are expensive to rotate left/right because they would have to be mounted the other way on the rim to turn in their tread design direction.

It appears from the web articles that this new rule is based on one tire manufacturer bringing tire sellers to a racetrack with a fair bit of water on one of the turns. I wonder if the advantage in this particular situation has anything to do with winter in my region where the water is solid or fluffy in winter. I wonder if the tire sellers are motivated by the idea of us users tossing our partly worn tires earlier and increasing tire sales. In six winters with these winter tires I have experienced substantial improvement in ice traction. I failed to rotate at first and soon got the front pair more worn, put them on the back . . . and never experienced a rear skid effect with winter tires. It did occur once before winter tires were invented - I touched the brakes on a full size van, rear wheel drive and there happened to be an ice patch and skidding was instant. Lucky I had fast reflexes then and steered out of it immediately.

Do what makes you feel better. If you don't want to take the word of Tire Rack, and would prefer to take the word of folks here on the forum, go that way. At the end of the day it's not going to make a difference one way or the other. Especially if that one tire is only a year old, and it is a snow tire.

You say by buying 3, even though the one is fine, that you can't rotate and get more mileage out of them. Sure you can. Why not? You don't run snowtires year round do you?

Mike

5 years from now, the in-crowd thinking will be to put the best tires on the front. Then it'll change back. I always find it amusing how the way we did things years ago is no longer correct; then a few years go by and all if a sudden, the new, just discovered best way is the way we used to do it originally. I chalk it up to someone trying to be the smartest person in the room whose justifying his importance in the workplace.

Yep, at Costco the new tires go on the rear even if front wheel drive.

It is a rule.

Buy 4 tires

On a FWD vehicle if you put the more worn tires on the front and you lose traction you will experience wheel spin and slow down. If the more worn tires are on the rear and lose traction first (which is very likely) you may very well end up in the ditch with little warning, even in rain.

If the wear difference is minimal, I'd put the newer ones on the drive axle. There's no other way to get the wear on the new tires to catch up to the old ones. If the wear difference were significant (I see that you've already said it isn't), new tires to the rear, and run the fronts until they need replacement, then the next new pair goes to the rear, etc. until the end of time.

I read a sign saying better tires on rear when I was at discount tire this week getting some tires mounting on wheels for daughter. We had always put best tires on front (I worked at Sears Automotive while in college)... guess the current thinking is best on rear..