GOLFMK8
GOLFMK7
GOLFMK6
GOLFMKV

Dealership Recommends Not Rotating Tires??

digitalrurouni

Passed Driver's Ed
Location
East Coast
If you want your tires to last long then rotating and keeping an air on tire pressures is a must. Simple as that. Especially on cars where all the tire sizes are the same.
 

Crud_muffin

Ready to race!
Location
US
Car(s)
e-Golf
Um, no, rotations are definitely a good thing, except if the front and rear wheels are different sizes AND the tires are unidirectional.

Clearly this isn't the case on the GTI, so they are just being lazy. You should absolutely rotate. If the dealer won't do it, just do it at home. If you don't have a hydraulic jack, use the little one in the trunk... It's about a 15 minute job and gives you much better tire life and performance overall.
Couldn't agree more. And by doing it yourself you discover all kinds of things. Found this little retainer screw loose today. Not sure if a tech would've seen it or cared enough.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20171110_134519909.jpg
    IMG_20171110_134519909.jpg
    63.4 KB · Views: 788
  • IMG_20171110_074156738.jpg
    IMG_20171110_074156738.jpg
    58.3 KB · Views: 799

lostru

Ready to race!
Location
Central Arkansas
Once you convince them that rotating tires is a good thing try getting then to cross the fronts to the rear and rears straight to the fronts. It boggles their minds.
 
Last edited:

The Fed

Old Guys Rule
Location
Florida
Here's an issue. Many times your tires don't wear evenly and your balance is thrown off. You should always have your wheels checked. When I owned FWD cars I did this, and usually the tires needed a little added to bring them in. This just wasn't a tech telling me this - I watched them do it. Many times you'll just rotate and notice a rear tire put on the front vibrates a little. So if you really want to take care of your car correctly you'll pay for balancing. Or just buy an R. I was going to rotate at 10,000 miles but there's only maybe 2/32" difference between my fronts and rears. Not enough to bother, at least not for me. When the fronts are down to about 3/32" or if I notice any slippage in the rain I'll just replace all four. When I add up the cost for rotating, balancing, and the bother it's not worth it to me.
 

Crud_muffin

Ready to race!
Location
US
Car(s)
e-Golf
Great point on balancing. I try to do the 5k rotation myself; 10k on a 'road force' balancer near me. I like your math on the 4 Motion, lol. It would simplify things.
 

Shane_Anigans

Drag Race Newbie
Location
SE MI
Car(s)
2017 GTI Sport DSG
BMW dealership says the same for my xDrive 5 series. But thought that was just a BMW AWD thing.

All BMWs, RWD or AWD. Because of the weight balance, rotating the tires won't extend their life at all, and because each tire wears in a bit differently, rotating tires on a BMW usually creates more problems than it solves. If you've got a lead foot, you may go through rear tires faster, but not at such a rate that rotating would have made a difference.

As for the rest of the AWD world, I would still rotate at 7500 miles. Most cars carry more weight on the front tires than the rear (in the neighborhood of 60/40), and since most AWD systems send the bulk of their torque to only one axle until the other starts to slip, the front tires on most AWD cars will still wear faster than the rears. BMW xDrive is biased to RWD in most conditions, but again, the weight balance makes all the tires wear pretty evenly.
 

flipflp

Autocross Newbie
Location
PNW
Car(s)
'16 Golf R DSG
All BMWs, RWD or AWD. Because of the weight balance, rotating the tires won't extend their life at all, and because each tire wears in a bit differently, rotating tires on a BMW usually creates more problems than it solves. If you've got a lead foot, you may go through rear tires faster, but not at such a rate that rotating would have made a difference.

As for the rest of the AWD world, I would still rotate at 7500 miles. Most cars carry more weight on the front tires than the rear (in the neighborhood of 60/40), and since most AWD systems send the bulk of their torque to only one axle until the other starts to slip, the front tires on most AWD cars will still wear faster than the rears. BMW xDrive is biased to RWD in most conditions, but again, the weight balance makes all the tires wear pretty evenly.
I think you're giving too much credit to the "ultimate driving machine" and their weight balance. Directional tires and staggered wheels and tires mean you physically can't rotate tires. Doesn't matter if rwd or awd. Has nothing to do with weight, or power distribution. That's true with most BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus sedans, some SUVs, etc.

To under-complicate this topic: if you can rotate your tires, even just front to back, you should. Every oil change, every other, when you feel like it. It will help. Done.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
 

Shane_Anigans

Drag Race Newbie
Location
SE MI
Car(s)
2017 GTI Sport DSG
I think you're giving too much credit to the "ultimate driving machine" and their weight balance. Directional tires and staggered wheels and tires mean you physically can't rotate tires. Doesn't matter if rwd or awd. Has nothing to do with weight, or power distribution. That's true with most BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus sedans, some SUVs, etc.

To under-complicate this topic: if you can rotate your tires, even just front to back, you should. Every oil change, every other, when you feel like it. It will help. Done.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Nah, that was just my observation from several years of working in a BMW service department. Many of my clients who'd never owned a BMW didn't believe that rotating tires on their BMW was utterly pointless, but the people who'd been driving them for years didn't question the maintenance recommendations anymore.

Your "always rotate your tires" theory is true for most cars. But on RWD BMWs with non-staggered tires (i.e. most of them) that we never rotated, by the time the rear ones were due for replacement, at let's say 2.5mm tread, the fronts were down to about 3mm. So, over the course of 30,000 miles, if the tires had been rotated 3 times (every 7500 miles) at a cost of let's say $30 per rotation, there's $90 that could have gone towards the set of replacement tires.
 

Trancebolt

Ready to race!
Location
California
Rotating may cause feelings of new tire break in for a few hundred, maybe more, miles. It will give you more time driving on parts of the rubber with less wear which theoretically means smoother ride and better support. In practice though my tires feel better and are more predictable to me when broken in more. Both my cars are non awd, square stance all around. So ill be rotating every 5k, but not for tire life. Balancing and alignments also help over the course of your tires lifespan. I believe in these things.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
 
Top