New tyres - front or rear?

G_M

Rear tyres are worn and need replacing. Front are fine - maybe halfway through life.

Audi dealership previously advised me to put new ones on the front (that's why it's the older, rear ones, that are worn).

1st tyre shop said "Don't worry about the rear, you can put cheaper ones on as long as the front are good. The rear wheels just follow along, it's the front that do all the work."

2nd tyre shop said "Always put the new, better tyres on the rear. When you swing round a bend you need good grip at the back to control any skidding."

So what do people think? Put the new pair on the front, or the rear?

Joe_Horner

Honestly, unless you're planning to treat the roads like a track day outing where you're hanging on the limit, just change the ones that are worn.

Strider590

Just change them as they are, people say all sorts of rubbish about swapping front to rear or rear to front.... They achieve absolutely nothing at all. Your tyres still wear out just as fast and in the long run (1-2 years) you'll have bought as many tyres as you would have by not swapping them over.

If the legal tyre tread limit was literally slick, then it'd be a bit different.

neilmcl

I've always tended to rotate the newer tyres to the driving wheels as they tend to get the most wear.

skivenov

I always rotate my tyres, it's easier than picking the car up and carrying it

Old jokes aside, depends on the car.

As a generalisation, I tend to keep the best tyres on the front, because the front tyres do all the steering and most of the braking, so if you have to do a brake/swerve in the wet, you've got less chance of aquaplaning.

However, I totally acknowledge the argument for having the best tyres on the back in a rear wheel drive car, a lot of 4 wheel drives, goods vehicles, and cars with crap weight distribution (like mine).

GolfBravo

There are 2 very good reasons for keeping the better tyres on the back on a front wheel drive car: aquaplaning and lift off oversteer.

skivenov

Having been in an aquaplaning FWD car going into a corner reasonably quickly, I find that very hard to agree with. I will freely admit it was luck not skill that got me out of that one as there's very little you can do to improve your situation when that happens.

When the back end steps out on a car, you've still got the steering to use.

GolfBravo

skivenov wrote: »

When the back end steps out on a car, you've still got the steering to use.

An average driver will not safely recover from a sudden oversteer. Understeer is much easier to recover from.

So you want to prevent oversteer and rear tyres aquaplaning by fitting the better tyres.

On a FDW car you also have more weight on the front axle (~60%), making the rear tyres more likely to aquaplane.

forgotmyname

Ahhh lift off oversteer. What a wonderful way to learn to drive. It taught me that once i had commited to a corner or bend and set my speed then that is the speed it will carry through.

Do not lift off mid bend. No matter what tyres you have fitted or how miraculous the manufacturer claims the handling to be.

I just change tyres on the axle that require them. I do usually get them done in pairs though. Not an OCD thing just happens that my tyres wear evenly.

bigjl

I would just put them on the rear since the rears are worn.

I am aware of the study done by Michelin and have read it.

Over the last few years i have started to rotate tyres to even up the wear and tend to change tyres as a set of four.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

I'd say it depends how your car wears tyres.

On our Golf, the rear tyres only ever hold the car up and barely wear. The front tyres wear very evenly so there doesn't seem to be any advantage swapping front to rear, so just replace the front, though I have been conscious that as it is now old and doing very low mileage I want to consume the old tyre before it gets perished - rubber does degrade slowly over time.

On my old Merc, it tended to scrub the outside of the tyres very badly - it is in the nature of their quirks of design that they put a very tight turning circle on them and if you look at just about any Merc tyres, they wear very badly on the outside of the tyre due to scrubbing round corners. Therefore it makes sense to swap those tyres around, so you get to scrub the outside of 4 tyres rather than two - the rears on that car wore due to being the driving wheels and the front due to steering so otherwise the wear was quite well split.

I also don't use tyres down to the legal minimum as on the Merc you could tell that the handling went right off.

Also these days if you have stability control, the nuances of grip will be compensated for by the car. It is pretty hard to drive a modern car beyond the limits of its grip without being an idiot, so for general driving, worrying about losing the back end due to lift off oversteer or whatever just isn't going to happen.

So I would go for whatever pattern of replacement keeps the most overall grip on the car, with a bias to the front wheels on a FWD car - on the basis of what you are really going to depend on is an emergency stop where most of the braking force ends up on the front wheels. Simply put, if you think that a part worn tyre in reasonable condition is going to put you at risk of losing the back end, then it is within your control not to drive like an idiot, but needing an emergency stop is not within your control.