Tires on my ~month-old '94 PEP are near the end of their life.... The rear tires are noticably more worn than the front. I'm wondering which tends to wear faster in the experience of those on the forum? Recognizing that a new set of rubber is in my near future, should I rotate the fresher tires to the rear to prolong the usable life of this set or leave it as-is?

Car is used for weekend touring and soon for attempts at autocross, and not driven particularly hard (yet).

 

i thought front tires wear faster due to steering??

 

***Moves to the suspension/wheels/tires/brakes section with his imaginary mod power!***

Tire wear is all in relation to the alignment settings and weight distribution of the car. That's why rotations are done every set miles or when needed so often to help equalize the wear. Just get all 4 new tires and then get an alignment with proper autoX settings.

Jeremy

 

Usually the rears wear out faster on our cars. If you had a Honda, the fronts would wear out faster.

 

they'll both wear at about the same rate if you dont hammer on it and drive like you want to get good gas milage

 

That's not what the car was built for though.


Anyway, typically on a RWD car, the rear tires will wear faster because they're the drive wheels. Like was stated before, if you have a FWD car, typically the fronts will wear down first.

 

Vote count indicates rear wears faster. I'll rotate the newer ones to the back and see how it goes. Thanks folks.

 

You want the tires with the most tread to be in the front because making sure you go where you steer the vehicle is most important. Are you seriously considering putting bald tires on the front?

 

Ah - good point. It's certainly more important to put whatever remaining tread I have to good use than it is to minimize wear rate (so that all four tires eventually pop at the same time). And in my book steering and braking are more important than acceleration.

Sorry to be so ghetto. I'll get new tires for summer, promise.

 

depends on how you drive and how the car is set.

rwd will tend to wear faster on the rear wheels, though.

either option is bad.

bald on rear = snap oversteer.
bald on front = super understeer.

just get a new pair of tires for the worn ones.

 

And rotate the tires this time. The whole set will last longer, and rotations (before one pair goes bald) will even out the wear.

-Max