DRW Tire rotation - Diesel Forum

guardrail22 · 01-09-2008, 02:11 PM

is shown as being side to side only on page 218 of the owner manual.

This kind of flies in the face of what I was taught about radials - namely don't ever chnage the rotation dorection.

Planning on doing this at 5k to coincide with putting on my Centramatics but wondering if anyone has any experience with this side to side rotation.

CaptSkup · 01-09-2008, 02:29 PM

I got to reread my owners manual but I am pretty sure that tire rotation is not required on the 450's. I have the Off Road package ( I know, kind of laughable) and have the so-called agressive tread, though I cannot see much difference, HSR's on front, HDR on rear.

haul_n_horses2 · 01-09-2008, 02:42 PM

I have balanced the front axle side to side for the life of the truck 90 Kmiles with no issues.

h2guy · 01-09-2008, 03:19 PM

My dually 350 manual sez DON'T rotate the rears, just fronts, side to side.

teamroper60 · 01-09-2008, 03:28 PM

I only swap my fronts side to side as well. Thus far, I haven't had any issues related to this "rotation" pattern.

Many years ago, I remember there was a lot of talk about not changing the direction of rotation on radial. I don't know if that discussion had merit back then or not, but it apparently doesn't matter anymore.

YODA · 01-09-2008, 03:38 PM

Yep side to side in the norm. Front will be the big concern as the rears for me have shown little problem. You can do a proper rotation, but you will need to dismount tires to do it. I think the for recommendation is the easy way to prevent that.

I solve the problem as I have a full set of studded snow tires that I put on each year, so I set up the normal X rotation with the inside duels( lease wear of all of them ) going to the front opposite of where they were on the back.

I believe the days of not x-ing radials is gone.

Bigshow · 01-10-2008, 01:28 AM

I did a dismount type of rotation once on mine because both sides of the steering tires were feathering a bit and all alignment stuff was spot on! I have 86000 miles on these Michelins and still running. Pretty close to replacement time though. My older farm truck is also a dually and next go-round I will be moving steering tires from this truck onto the other one for drive tires.

guardrail22 · 01-10-2008, 08:02 AM

YODA - where you been?

Paul H · 01-11-2008, 12:04 PM

Only wear the reas get is they wear the center of the tire flat.

If they made the rear of the front rimm and the rear of the outside dually rimm polished as good as the front surface then you could do a true X rotation. Left front to right rear and visa versa without trouble.

601HP · 01-11-2008, 03:46 PM

I still have the original General tires on my truck, and am just now at 31,000 miles. About 13,000 miles ago, we took the noisy front tires that were tread-cupping and put them side by side on the right rear.

The original right rears were then positioned as front tires. And I eliminated the factory shocks, and installed a set of Monroe Reflex shocks all the way around.

The pair of cupped tires now on the right rear are wearing more smoothly.

The original right rear tires now on the front, are wearing very uniformly and are showing minimal tread-cupping.

During the tire rotation, an alignment was done and negligible correction was made.

This was a $50.00 rotation account all the dismounting and remounting.

David

ProDriver18 · 01-11-2008, 09:27 PM

I'll throw my two cents in here.
My situation might be alittle different being as 98% of the miles on my truck are highway and over half of those are towing miles. I also carry about 1,000-1,200lbs of "stuff" in the bed at all times like a 91 gallon auxillary fuel tank, 2 full toolboxes and a 5th wheel hitch but here's what I do with mine.
I try to rotate the tires on my dually as close to 10,000 mile intervals as practical.
The front tires go to the inside rear. The inside rear to the outside rear. The outside rear to the front. I don't change from side to side on the truck but do change rotation or direction when going from inside to the outside rear wheels. Do it the same way everytime so you don't mess up the routine.
I don't need to have my tires balanced as I have the Centramatics.
I run 72 psi in the steers and 65 psi in the drives, all the time, unless I happen to hook onto an especially heavy trailer and then I bump the pressures up by 5 psi.
The last 3 sets of tires I've had on this truck have easily gone over 100,000 miles each since I started this routine.
I recently replaced the steers but still have the other 4 of the set of 6 on the rear with 113,000 on them and they are down to 5/32s now. When I get around 10,000 on the new steers I'll go ahead and replace the other 4 and work the steers into the rotation pattern on the rear.
Yes to do it this way every tire has to be dismounted and remounted, you simply work that into the deal when you buy new tires. My tire guy knows that I buy a set of 6 tires once a year and that if he doesn't rotate them for free I'll go somewhere else to buy them. He didn't like it at first but he's gotten over it since then.
It works for me. I can't complain about getting 100K plus miles on even a set of "generic" tires.
I have a good friend with a similar truck except his is 4wd that doesn't believe in rotating tires. He replaces his steers twice to one set of drives. He also only gets about 70,000 out of the drives.

KG4ZRC · 01-12-2008, 11:39 PM

To answer the question...

With modern radial tires you no longer have to worry about the tires getting set in a one way pattern. You are able to swap the tires side to side with no issues.

Unlike your older radials...

white_nite · 01-13-2008, 12:20 AM

FWIW... My tire shop rotates dually tires like this...

Tires that are paired stay paired to keep the tire level even throughout the life of the pair. So on a fresh rotation, the fronts will pair together, and move to right or left side, the pair that is replaced will move to the opposite side and with the final pair going to the front. (everything basically moves in a clockwise or counterclockwise rotation) Certainly not saying that this method is any more correct or incorect than the other, just the way they do it.

guardrail22 · 01-13-2008, 01:58 PM

you have to break them down and chnage wheels - correct?

white_nite · 01-13-2008, 03:47 PM

Actually, it depends on how you rotate... you can move the tires around, never switching rotation direction, if the inner on the rear are swapped sides of the truck when they go to the front.
Considering you have stock or aftermarket interchangeable rims, of course!

Now if you have location specific rims and want to keep the rotation the same, you would have to break down the wheel and change to keep the rotation going the same way. But I would not be concerned unless you were running some sort of a directional tire...