> I remember in the old days, when radial tires first came out, that you
> should always keep the same tires on each side of the car when rotating
> them. Left side front to rear and rear to front...right side F to R and R
> to F. You didn't do the old RF to LR, LF to RR, RR to RF and LR to LF,
> which was the prefered method for bias ply tires.
That was an artifact of early US radial tire manufacture, which was
generally piss-poor in quality. Some tires were prone to belt
separation if the direction of rotation was reversed.
> The owners manuals for the Lincoln and Mercury's I now sell explain tire
> rotation the old way. Should modern radials be swapped side to side during
> rotation? I am not talking about directional performance tires, just plain
> old all weather tires. Any web references would be appreciated.
Tires are better now. There's no reason to avoid changing the direction
of rotation of tires.
The world's of course more complex, with directional and asymmetric
tread patterns on many tires, and staggered tire sizes on a lot of cars
that make rotation difficult or impossible.
John.
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