Uneven car tyre wear / rotating wheels

[MyLittleStudPony]

My car's front, passenger side tyre is wearing more on the outside edge than the rest of the tyre. I wonder if it is due to cornering hard on roundabouts? Or if the tracking or other alignment needs adjusting.

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The drivers' side front has the slightly accelerated wear on its outer edge but not nearly as much.

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This happened before, when the last pair of front tyres were wearing out: viewtopic.php?p=307741

The new tyres have done about 15,000 miles and are down to about 4mm on the passenger side, while the drivers' side one has a fraction more left on it. So a little over half worn I guess.

What do you think? My instinct is to swop them with the rears (diagonally). The rears are almost new. They're all the same make / model / size of tyre.

Maybe I'm worrying about nothing and should just leave them alone.

[KungFooBob]

Are the tyres directional?

If so won't swapping them diagonally reverse the direction?

Or is it only bike tyres that are directional, I'm confusing myself now.

[MyLittleStudPony]

It's a very good point. Some car tyres are directional. I believe these are not, although it took me about 15 minutes of looking at them and imagining and taking pictures etc to work that out.

[cheb]

You can tell if they are not rotating by the big flat bit at the bottom of the tyre.

My Transit used to wear the outer edge of the front tyres, I used to take them off the rim and put them back on the other way to even it out. And I'd switch them from front to back to even out the overall wear.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I live in MK, I also wear out my front left tyre first. Two things which might be related.

Car tyres can be directional, yes.

[KungFooBob]

So directional tyres must come in left and rights then, two separate skus?

Or are they symmetrical?

[Mr. Dazzle]

Yeah they're usually symmetrical and you can put them with either side facing 'in', whereas other ones have a side marked "this side out" don't they?

I would imagine really high end ones do come in left and right though. But if you're buying those you're probably replacing all four at once right, so you'd get a complete set.

[MyLittleStudPony]

They come in symmetrical and asymmetrical, the latter typically having marked 'in' and 'out' sides.

And directional or non-directional, the former having directional arrows.

Or both.

I think mine are asymmetrical, non-directional. So I can swop them side to side as well as front to back. Which I will do, because I'm a rough old scrimper.

[Wossname]

I’d just swap those front to back, and not worry about diagonally. Why would you do that?

My view, FWIW, is that wear on the outside edges of wide tyres, which most decent cars have these days, takes place because of scrubbing. Think of a wide tyre as an axle with no differential: the inside edge travels a shorter distance than the outside when you turn a corner, especially in slow, sharp turns eg when parking, so part of it scrubs. You’d expect the inside and outside edges to scrub equally, but weight distribution and other things beyond my comprehension could affect that.

Those tyres will last for ages on the back.

[Yorick]

Sometimes the directional thingy is to protect the makers.

On track we used Dunlop D211 track tyres. They were supposedly directional, but once the right side had worn out, the tyre guy changed them round for us to double the life

But he wouldn't do it for the punters

[wull]

Those tyres look symmetrical so can be fitted any way.

You either get rotation signs and or the word “outside” if you can’t see either of these they can be fitted anyway.

But looking at the tread will tell you what you need to know, if they look like asymmetrical tread pattern then you’ll have an outside indicator.

[Dodgy69]

Looks like it's rubbing on something to me.

[Ian]

Don't worry about all that uneven tyre wear bollocks, just gan it up on t'back wheel.

[dern]

Measure the tread across the tyre. If the tread depth decreases towards the worn shoulder then you’ve probably got an alignment problem. If all the measurements are roughly the same then it’s your driving. As long as the tyre wear is consistent across the tyre then I wouldn’t do anything as you’re likely to wear the tyres out before the shoulder wear becomes significant.

[Yorick]

When we all had company cars in Milton Keynes, it was a race to see who shagged the tyres quickest on the roundabouts

There's some quiet roundabouts away from populated areas with my tyre marks still on

[The Martian]

Apply more throttle on roundabouts and steer with the rear to even things up wherever possible. Ya fanny.