Wheel rotation |
Every time you give your vehicle to service, there are three things that are done to your tyres, wheel balancing, alignment and rotation. Wheel balancing is to remove unbalanced centrifugal forces that result from the rotation of your tyres at speeds. Wheel rotation on the other hand is a technique to maximise tyre life by splitting tyre wear equally among all the tyres.
I'm sure you know that the front wheels of a car, especially in the front wheel drive cars(almost all cars sold in India except the long gone fiat and ambassador are front wheel drive) are loaded heavily as they have to do both propulsion, steering and braking. Also, since the spare tyre is hardly used, its wear is minimum. Thus, the wheels are periodically rotated; the positions changed regularly in order that the tyres wear uniformly and evenly. Normally, tyres or rotated every 5000kms.
By following a regular and constant rotation pattern; all your tyres will more or less be in the same condition so that you have 5 completely bald tyres at the end of your tyre life. Hence you can stretch your tyre change interval.
There are different rotation patterns you can follow. It is crucial though that you stick to one particular pattern else rotation will be of no use. Here are few typical rotation pattern. In order to make explanation simple, I will explain using the following codes.
F stands for Front.
R stands for Rear.
L stands for Left.
Ri stands for Right.
S stands for Spare.
->> indicates the change in position of the tyre
One pattern is the clockwise/anticlockwise pattern
S->>RRi->>FRi->>FL->>RL->>S
Which means that the Spare tyre replaces rear right, rear right replaces front right, front right replaces front left, front left replaces rear left and the rear left is kept as spare.
Another popular pattern is as follows is a four tyre rotation pattern without disturbing the spare tyre.
FRi->>RRi->>FL->>RL->>FRi
Front right replaces rear right, rear right replaces front left, front left replaces rear left, rear left replaces front right.
There are many rotation patterns followed by many different organisations. It is however important that you follow a rotation pattern and furthermore stick to your rotation pattern in order that your tyres wear evenly and last longer.
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