5-tire rotation

[spelingbeachampeun]

I plan on rotating my spare tire in when I do tire rotations on my Trailhunter, every 5k miles. When looking through the owners manual, however, it indicates to perform a 5-tire rotation, but keep the spare continuously on the passenger side of the vehicle, not cross-rotating any of the tires at all. Constantly rotating a third tire on the passenger side of the vehicle would cause the passenger tires to wear slower than the driver side, with its tires staying on the vehicle the entire time. After driving 50k miles the passenger side tires and spare would all only have 30-35k miles, but drivers would be at 50k.

Owners manual:

Maybe I'm overthinking it but Is there any reason not to rotate the tires like the picture below? This would wear all of the tires more evenly and I'm not sure of any issues it would cause. Why would Toyota not recommend, or recommend against, cross-rotating?

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[Burgi]

I don’t think it really matters much but the front to back rotation has to do with rotational vs non rotational tires. In theory if you have rotational tires and cross rotate from one side to the other it would force them to rotate in the wrong direction.

 

[spelingbeachampeun]

I don’t think it really matters much but the front to back rotation has to do with rotational vs non rotational tires. In theory if you have rotational tires and cross rotate from one side to the other it would force them to rotate in the wrong direction.

Correct, but the factory tires are not directional. I just don’t know why Toyota recommends the way they do, when it will wear one side significantly more than the other.

 

[AAMC]

I plan on rotating my spare tire in when I do tire rotations on my Trailhunter, every 5k miles. When looking through the owners manual, however, it indicates to perform a 5-tire rotation, but keep the spare continuously on the passenger side of the vehicle, not cross-rotating any of the tires at all. Constantly rotating a third tire on the passenger side of the vehicle would cause the passenger tires to wear slower than the driver side, with its tires staying on the vehicle the entire time. After driving 50k miles the passenger side tires and spare would all only have 30-35k miles, but drivers would be at 50k.

Owners manual:

Maybe I'm overthinking it but Is there any reason not to rotate the tires like the picture below? This would wear all of the tires more evenly and I'm not sure of any issues it would cause. Why would Toyota not recommend, or recommend against, cross-rotating?

I used to rotate the BFG KM3's on my on old Rubicon like the 2nd pic. i got 75k miles out of them over 5 years and still had more tread available when I traded it in on the new 4Runner. I thought the wear pattern over time was really uniform.

 

[Shmody]

Correct, but the factory tires are not directional. I just don’t know why Toyota recommends the way they do, when it will wear one side significantly more than the other.

I find it odd that is their recommendation as well. I worked in auto service industry for nine years and we performed five wheel rotations on plenty of vehicles, never keeping three tires on one side all the time.

My theory on rotations is to always do it the same every time. I would follow the second picture you added and ensure you always complete in the same pattern. We would often see customers who would only rotate front to back then request we do a cross pattern due to poor alignment and shoulder wear and they would have issues with vibrations and more often than not they were out of balance due to radial runout that could not be corrected.

 

[CMill4Runner]

I find it odd that is their recommendation as well. I worked in auto service industry for nine years and we performed five wheel rotations on plenty of vehicles, never keeping three tires on one side all the time.

My theory on rotations is to always do it the same every time. I would follow the second picture you added and ensure you always complete in the same pattern. We would often see customers who would only rotate front to back then request we do a cross pattern due to poor alignment and shoulder wear and they would have issues with vibrations and more often than not they were out of balance due to radial runout that could not be corrected.

Exactly, I do 5 tire rotations on anything I have that has a real spare and non-directional tires. I have always just brought the spare to the front driver, then F Driver to R Driver, R Driver to F Passenger, F Passenger to R passenger, R Passenger to spare. Keeping it consistent so I can't mess it up!

 

[AdFour]

I was also looking at the manual a few weeks back and didn't understand the Toyota rotation pattern. The 2nd/lower rotation image makes more sense to me. Are we missing something here??

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